The Gaming Den

Actually, there are only two cards that are explicitly Paladins - Amelia, Silver Paladin, and White Paladin, and both of them are in Swordcraft. Havencraft does have quite a lot of Clerics and holy warriors, but they are *mostly* explicitly priests/priestesses, nuns, clerics, etc. The nearest thing in aesthetics/name to Paladins in Havencraft is the White Knight, who is pretty Paladinish in aesthetics and also in effect (he heals everyone on your side when he enters play).

So there are three kinds of packs that Rupees can unlock. What packs should you be opening for different characters? I opened a Bahamut pack and got an Imperial Dragoon that is apparently so rainbow that he gives you an emblem (?) for opening it. But he seems like he's supposed to be part of a Dragoncraft turbo draw deck and I don't have any of the pieces for that. Also the starting packs gave me a Soul Dealer who a little bit of internet searching told me is part of zero decks.

So assuming that you're starting from what is essentially nothing, what packs should you be opening?

-Username17

If you haven't invested time into the game yet, look up rerolling on an android phone or android emulator - basically, you start the game and do the bare minimum of tutorial skipping and then open all your free packs, and then if you have a few legendaries you like you keep it and if you don't you reset the app's memory and try again. Once you have a set of legendaries you like, you link that roll to your Steam account and play on whichever of PC or phone you like from then on. Starting with a decent set of half-a-dozen Legendary cards can save you time in the future and let you start with an easier time. It's probably not worth it if you've already put in any significant time to e.g. beat the single player or whatever.

If you do reroll, I recommend checking out the thread on SomethingAwful for the game for a decent Legendary tier list to see what's good or bad in more detail.

If you are just starting out, you should beat the single player for exclusive cards you can't get elsewhere and some Take 2 tickets, and you should also try to play 20 private matches against people to conclusion (win or lose - you get 100 gold each). Also, for each of the elite AI you beat you get 200 gold.

Anyways, in terms of packs to buy, it generally matters what legendaries you want to have a chance of drawing - if you're interested in Daria runecraft you basically should spend all your early free gold from the 20 private matches thing etc. on RoB packs in order to get better odds of free Darias. If you want to do Havencraft Seraphs you probably want a couple Seraphs (DE). Etc. I wouldn't worry about golds - it doesn't hurt nearly as much to make them out of vials - and silver/bronze cards are super cheap to make out of vials if you don't happen to have enough already.

If you don't have a strong preference in deck to play, I'd buy about 30 each of Rise of Bahamut and Darkness Evolved and then mostly buy Standard - this should cover you for most of the Rise of Bahamut and Darkness Evolved bronze/silver cards, and then the larger Standard set playset is very useful and has a lot of core legendaries / golds in it for basically every deck and playstyle.

The most important legendaries in each class to look for (my own opinion - based on what I see people playing with most often in Ladder):

Forestcraft: Ancient Elf (Standard), Crystalia Tia (Darkness Evolved)
Swordcraft: Albert, Levin Saber (Rise of Bahamut), Aurelia, Regal Saber (Standard)
Runecraft: Daria, Dimensional Witch (Rise of Bahamut), Merlin (Standard)
Dragoncraft: Dark Dragoon Forte (Standard).
Bloodcraft: Bloody Mary (Standard), Queen Vampire (Darkness Evolved)
Shadowcraft: Cerberus (Standard), Nephthys (Rise of Bahamut)
Heavencraft: Enstatued Seraph (Darkness Evolved), Moon Al-Miraj (Standard)

Most useful Legendary neutrals are Dark Angel Olivia (Darkness Evolved), Prince of Darkness (Standard) , Odin (Darkness Evolved), and Bahamut (Rise of Bahamut), but most neutral legendaries are at least vaguely useful in one context or another.

And here are the draw rates for each pack:

[*]Standart
[*]Darkness Evolved
[*]Rise of Bahamut

Havencraft


Leader: Eris. Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia!

So Havencraft is aesthetically very MTG-White, being all about clerics and religion and so forth. However, the designers decided literally anything can be part of Havencraft if you put 'Holy' in front of it. You can have tigers by naming them "Holyflame Tigers", or falcons by naming them "Holy Falcons". Dragons? Sure, call it a Holywing Dragon and it's in. Also, in addition to the white/good stuff has some "evil/repressive religion" stuff, as represented by cards that are essentially inquisition-themed removal.

In general, the strategy and abilities of Havencraft are very MTG-White. They are focused on defense and healing, combined with 'investment' cards that do nothing now but pay off later in the game - power now traded for power later on a very large scale, even to the extent of alternative win conditions that take time to work.

• Banishment abilities - A Better Kind of Removal
• Countdown amulets - Price now for power later
• Healing abilities - keep yourself and your creatures alive
• Alternative Win Condition decks!

Banishment is the simplest part of Havencraft to discuss. It's effectively like MTG's exile - a way of removing things without outright killing them. In Shadowverse, this allows you to get rid of things without triggering Last Word effects that happen when things are killed. There are some meaningful Last Word cards in every craft, but even when those aren't in play it's still removal and still useful. Blackened Scripture banishes something with 3 or less defense instantly for 2 mana; Priest of the Cudgel does the same 'banish 3 or less defese' when it evolves, and turns into a 4/5 at the same time - so Cudgelling usually removes two enemy followers from the board (one via banish, one via hitting with the Rush from evolution).


Blackened Scripture and the Evolved version of Priest of the Cudgel

Countdown Amulets are a lot like Suspend cards in MTG - these are amulets that are put into play with a 'countdown' timer on them. At the start of every turn, the player who's turn it is has all their Countdown Amulets tick down by one. Any Countdown amulet that hits zero for any reason, immediately kills themselves. A lot of Havencraft's Countdown amulets have "Last Word" so when they kill themselves, they do their effect at that point.

For a concrete example of this sort of thing, Beastcall Aria is one of the strongest Last Word amulets in the game for Take 2 matches. It costs 2 to summon, and does NOTHING on the board for two turns. On the third turn, it kills itself at the start of the turn and creates a 2/1 Holy Falcon with Storm and a 4/4 Holyflame Tiger - which is TOTALLY off the curve for a 2-cost card (recall Bloodcraft pays 2 health for a 2/1 Storm guy for 2 mana, and doesn't get the 4/4 tiger at all). However, it was an investment of 2 mana on turn 2 and only paying off on Turn 5 - a creature that was a simple 2/2 for 2 could have hit the enemy 3 times in that time period, left alone. There are a whole bunch of these "summon one or more creature" amulets. A neat part of this is that most removal effects that target amulets destroy the amulet rather than banishing it. This... triggers Last Word effects. So if your opponent destroys your Countdown amulet, it just triggers the Last Word effect and pops the creatures out early.


Beastcall Aria is a REALLY CHEAP amulet that turns into two rather powerful creatures after a while.

There are also some removal and other non-creature effect amulets. Death Sentence is a 4-cost amulet that has the effect "Destroy 2 enemy followers at random" with a countdown of 1 - so it happens on your next turn. It's great removal, but requires you to wait for the next turn... or does it? There are a bunch of cards which remove turns of waiting from your amulets (and if they reduce it to zero turns, then the amulet triggers immediately). For example, Hallowed Dogma is a 2-cost spell that cuts off 2 turns of waiting for an amulet, and also draws a card. Similarly, Healing Prayer heals any target for 3 hp, and reduces every Countdown of all your amulets by 1. Playing either of these on your Death Sentence can turn 'removal next turn' into 'instant removal'.


Letting your enemy trade into you before your kill spell goes off is lame; luckily, some cards can help countdown amulets of all types break faster

Healing Prayer ties into the healing strategy I've mentioned before. In general, there are many healing spells in Havencraft - Monastic Holy Water is a 2-cost spell that heals anyone for 2 and draws a card; Healing Prayer has already been mentioned; Radiance Angel is a 5-drop that heals you for 3 and draws a card when played; Curate heals anyone for 5 when played... and there are a bunch of others.


All of these cards heal - some automatically target you, others can heal anyone

Healing is a part of every craft one way or another, but Havencraft takes it to a higher level. However... in general, 'healing' would not be a plan to win the game by itself, so much as a way to stall for a while and not lose immediately. However, this changes with the amulet Elana's Prayer - Elana's Prayer is a 3-drop amulet that makes it so when you heal yourself via any method, all your creatures get +1/+1. So Radiant Angel comes into play and immediately heals you so it makes itself a 3/5 and makes every other creature get +1/+1; then you Monastic Holy Water and buff creatures more and draw a card. The general idea is that with Elana's Prayer on the field you can play with a bunch of 'heals when enter the battlefield' creatures, 'heals at the start of every turn' creatures, healing cantrips and so forth, and have the whole thing add up to getting some REALLY big creatures out on the field if your opponent doesn't kill them fast. And if you are at 20 hp, and you 'heal' yourself for 0 hp because you can't go over 20... well your creatures still get to grow.


Elana's Prayer: Whenever your leader's defense is restored, give +1/+1 to all allied followers.

Last, and certainly not least, is a fairly central part of Havencraft, the alternative win condition card the Seraph. Enstatued Seraph is a countdown amulet to victory without hitting your opponent in the face with creatures or spells. It works like this:


Enstatued Seraph is an 8-drop 1-turn countdown amulet, which has Last Word: Summon an Awakened Seraph.
Awakened Seraph is a 1-turn countdown amulet, which has Last Word: Summon a Renascent Seraph.
Renascent Seraph is a 1-turn countdown amulet, which has Last Word: Summon a Seraph Lapis, Glory Be.
Seraph Lapis, Glory Be is a 1-turn countdown amulet, which has Last Word: Win The Match

So on turn 8, you play a 8-cost amulet that does NOTHING. Left alone, on the start of turn 9, it ticks. On turn 10, it ticks. On turn 11, it ticks. Finally, at the start of turn 12, if you've left it alone that long, it ticks one more time and then explodes and you win the match. So basically, if you can stall the game out long enough with a Seraph on the field, you will win. But it requires you to spend almost a whole turn doing nothing but playing the Seraph - at 8 mana cost, even with a full 10 mana you're not playing much other than a Seraph on turn Seraph is played. And it requires you to last to Turn 8 in the first place, and the Seraph doesn't win the game immediately - or even have ANY impact on the field at all when it's played.

In terms of interfering with this victory - there's not a whole lot of options to interfere directly. The extremely expensive neutral follower card Odin banishes any follower or amulet when played and will get rid of Seraph permanently, and the Runecraft card Petrify will either transmute or banish the Seraph depending on your Earth Rite amulet supply, but other than that all the cards which 'destroy' amulets (of which there are a number of options) just trigger the Last Word effect and in effect, just advance the Seraph a turn faster - it's a chain of Last Word amulets that destroy themselves to progress, after all. Control decks often run Odin during metas where Seraph is popular - it's a decentish control card even in other matchups, being versatile removal with a 4/3 body attached... but what's an aggro or midrange deck that can't afford to run Odin to do? Well, in the immortal words of Hearthstone and Starcraft personality Day9: Just go fucking kill him. To play Seraph you have to spend an entire turn doing very little, and it has to be very late in the game. You can take advantage of this to build board position and attempt to kill them before they can fully enact the Seraph plan. A lot of aggro decks basic plan calls for winning before Turn 8 ever happens in the first place. Further, a lot of aggro or midrange decks will make it suicidal for the Havencraft player to spend an entire turn putting out an amulet that does nothing immediately, by threatening to kill the Havencraft player if they don't constantly remove threats. Of course, the Havencraft player can set things up so that they'll get some other Countdown amulets triggering on Turn 8 to create creatures or kill enemies or whatever to make up for the fact they aren't playing anything that does anything from their hand that turn... but in that case their earlier portions of the game are even more vulnerable to aggro decks just running them over.

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Havencraft doesn't really have an 'aggro' deck, as such. But there are a bunch of different deckbuilding possibilities.

One of the most straightforward is straight up Seraph Haven, going all in on the alternative win condition. You run 2-3 Seraphs, and a lot of stalling cards to prevent your opponent winning before turn 8 - one of the favourites to stall is the 6-drop spell Themis's Decree, the Haven equivalent of Magic the Gathering's Wrath of God - an effect that destroys all creatures, allied and enemy alike. In this deck, you also run about ~9 cards that cost 3 mana or less and remove countdown from amulets. Ideally on turn 8 you drop the Seraph, and turn 9 you use THREE consecutive 'remove countdown from amulet' effects in order to tick through the entire Seraph thing on turn 9 and win the game, without having to do the the whole 'wait till turn 12' thing. Of course - to do this your deck is 9/40ths these amulet acceleration effects, and you naturally see 12/40 cards by turn 9 without any additional draw so you aren't even that certain to see the Seraph you need if you don't have additional draw... so you have to include a bunch of card draw effects, get-an-Amulet-from-deck effects, and similar in order to make this all more consistent. It's a control deck, essentially, where instead of building up to high value followers it builds up to a Seraph play. It tends to match well against some control decks (e.g. Control Shadowcraft decks) and horrifically badly against others (D-shift destroys it).


Themis's Decree, arguably the most powerful follower sweeper spell at a full board clear for 6 mana

Elana Haven is basically using the card Elana's prayer to crank up a ton of followers who heal you when they come into play or otherwise. Then you just make huge angels and healers and smack them into your opponent's face. It's pretty straightforward to play or pilot, but can be very effective and is extremely difficult to rush to death.

There are also Elana Seraph hybrid decks that use Seraphs as a backup win condition - if you are fighting someone with a lot of removal, you use Seraph as a back up to win; if you are fighting a more slow deck you just make giant creatures using Elana's Prayer and healing to win. These decks incorporate a few 'speed up amulet' effects but not enough to often have Turn 9 Seraph wins.

Finally, there are a lot of variants of Storm Haven / Garuda Haven and the like, where the idea is you use a lot of amulet cards which make Storm followers and you hit faces with very high value guys out of those amulets. Winged Sentinel Garuda is a big follower that cuts a countdown amulet timer by 3 and does 3 damage to the enemy face when it enters play, and using these to crack open amulets full of birds with Storm to also hit face is a big strategy.


This guy does a bunch of face damage and cracks open almost any Countdown amulet instantly

Neutral Cards

The 'neutral' aesthetic is highly weird - there is no consistent theme here. It's just 'general cool stuff that's weird and didn't fit anywhere else obviously'. For some reason, there are a lot of "angelic" and "demonic" cards, and a bunch of famous named angels and demons; the reason that any of these are not thematically grouped with Haven (for angels) or Blood (for demons) is not... obvious. Or indeed present at all.

In terms of mechanics, there are roughly 4 types of neutral cards:

• Shitty cards made of shit that are terrible
• Weird cards that do unique stuff
• Cards that are generic counters to specific strategies
• Cards that are big finishers.

First off, the shitty cards are usually things that are under the curve for most or all decks. The Fighter is the foremost example of this - it's a neutral 2/2 for 2 with NO abilities. The standard is a 2/2 for 2 with some really quite decent ability, or bonus stats, and there are even neutral 2/2 for 2 with abilities in neutral so there is NO reason to have a fighter in your deck in the endgame. These guys might be in one or two of your decks as a beginner because they are free cards and you might need to have a good mana curve to your deck - but they come out as fast as possible. One of the under-curve cards is in real decks because the Craft in question doesn't have anything with those stats for the curve at that cost point - Goblins are 1/2 for 1 that have better stats than anything else Forestcraft can get for 1, so show up in a few Forestcraft decks, but they won't ever show up in Swordcraft decks (where you can get an Officer 1/2 for 1) or in Shadowcraft decks (where you can get a 1/2 for 1 that makes a free shadow when it dies).


The Fighter has no place in any top-tier Shadowverse deck; Goblins on the other hand sometimes do.

Weird cards that do unique things is a broad category. There's a bunch of mechanics that show up on only one card - they tend to go into Neutral. I mentioned Path to Purgatory, which is a core part of several decks and is the only card to use shadows in non-Shadowcraft decks - as a refresher, it counts your Shadows (graveyard) and if you have 30 or more, nukes everything your opponent has for 6 at the end of every turn. There are lots of weird cards that do unique things - Lizardman are 3/2 for 3 with ward, that, when evolved, splits into another 3/2 Lizardman rather than getting bonus stats - and that lizardman can Evolve and split as well. Humpty Dumpty is a 3/3 that when evolved does 3 damage to everything on the board, including itself.


Two random cards that do things the rest of the game doesn't really do

Gourmet Emperor Khaisa is a 3-drop 2/2 that when killed puts an Ultimate Carrot in your hand. The Ultimate Carrot is a 2/2 that when killed puts itself into your hand again. Altered fate discards your hand and draws a card for each discarded card. Urd kills a follower and returns it to play, healing it and triggering Last Word. Etc. There's lots of weird shit that can be applicable to multiple decks.


Just... a lot of weird shit

There's also some weird shit that tries to tempt you to build a deck around it. For example, Harnessed Flame and Harnessed Glass. These are two very fragile and weak followers that cost 3 each and have some benefit when attacking. Not that interesting. But if you have them both on the field, then on the beginning of your NEXT turn, they merge into a 7/7 with Storm that, when it attacks, first does 7 damage to all enemies. That's ... crazy. But it's almost impossible to have them both survive to the next turn - the whole thing is a really impractical pipe dream.


Flame and Glass

The neutral counters to strategies are usually removal or ward cards that are good in general at countering threats or strategies. Angelic Barrage does 1 damage to all enemies (so it's good against Wide strategies like bat spam and the like). On the other side of things, we have several 5-drop spells that kill any creature with a bonus - Dance of Death kills a creature and does 2 burn damage to the enemy face, and shows up in a lot of aggro decks; Execution kills a creature but can also be targeted at amulets to kill those instead, and shows up some control decks; and Call of Cocytus kills a creature and can also be cast for 8 mana instead of 5 to also put a 5-drop 13/13 follower into your hand, and shows up in some other control decks.


These spells each are general 'kill any one unit' spells but each has a different upside that makes different decks want it.

The followers with ward like the Angelic Sword Maiden (2/6 with Ward) are good at deterring specific aggro decks. Odin is a Neutral follower who can Banish anything and therefore hard-counters Seraph strategies. In general, these sorts of cards are VERY helpful as tech which you can put into any of your decks if a specific meta kind of deck grows too predominant - if Forestcraft Fairy Aggro ever got way too common people could tech in a lot of Angelic Barrages to fight it; if Elana Haven strategies got too common people could tech in Execution to destroy the amulet, etc. In general, these cards being neutral means that a lot of answers can be put into any deck, and as a beginning player if you find that something is consistently strong against you or common in your meta, you can buy a set of answers once with vials and then put that set of answers into all your decks.


Angelic Sword Maiden isn't a GOOD card, but she can go in any deck that otherwise might have difficulty with people fielding many x/2 followers and who don't have a more strategy-specific card that can do that yet. Odin is a legit part of many control decks sometimes, especially when Seraph is prominent.

Finally, the big finisher cards in Neutral are really ways to make decks that want to take it late have more interesting out-of-craft options as ways to finish off games. There's Lucifer, a 9-drop 6/7 card that heals you for 4 every turn, and evolves to a 9/8 that damages the enemy face for 4 every turn. Dark Angel Olivia is a 9-drop 4/4 that sets you to 3 evolution points regardless of how many you've used up in the game so far - so if the game stretches to turn 11 or so it's amazing value, but it's 'only' usually a 6/6 with Rush on Turn 9 when it plays and Evolves. Bahamut is a 10-drop 13/13 follower that destroys EVERYTHING on the board when played, but can't attack your enemy's face if your opponent controls 2 or more creatures.


These are ways for Control decks to end games

The weirdest big neutral finisher is probably Prince of Darkness (known affectionately as Satan by players). A 10-drop 6/6, when played Satan replaces your deck with an "Apocalypse deck" - a deck with the following ten (extremely undercosted and powerful) cards:

• 3x 6-drop 8/8 with Storm
• 3x 5-drop 13/13
• 3x 7-drop spell that hits for 7 damage to any target and heals you for 7
• 1x Astaroth's Reckoning, a 10-drop spell that sets your opponent to 1 hp.

Prince of Darkness is a card which sets you up to win eventually by dropping huge effects at discounted prices

There's no real way to make a truly good/viable Neutral-only deck. However, a lot of the parts of a Neutral deck are unique and strong enough to get into other decks, and in particular the design of including a lot of Neutral cards that are good / versatile removal was a good idea.

So, I tried this game out today and pulled a gourmet emperor. At first I laughed, because that card is kinda funny, but then I just kept pulling more.

So it turns out that a lot of the times it says it has automatically added stuff to your inventory it actually means that you have to go to your crate, click on it, and then click on it again in the buying packs menu. That's weird. But anyway, I had a lot more cards than I thought. But I'm still a long way from any kind of deck that seems particularly good except maybe Discard Dragon. I ended up with 2 Imperial Dragoons, which seems like it's most of the cost of that deck (other than the Fortes that you should apparently get regardless of what kind of Dragoncraft you are doing). On the gold front, I have one Dracomancer's Rites and one Uriel, which is relevant but both of them together cost less than half as many vials as a single rainbow card, so whatever.

A Turn 5 Wyvern Cavalier into a Turn 6 Imperial Dragoon seems pretty good if you've managed to get the Dracomancer Rites into play. It might end the game even if you don't - but there's probably a pretty good chance that it ends the game by "your opponent answers your Dragoon and then you don't have a hand." The Dracomancer Rites are so important to the finisher that I think you're packing 1-3 Uriels so that your virtual number of Dracomancer Rites is higher than 3.

There appear to be two cards with Madness (cards that are played when they are discarded). The Luxfang Kit and Trail of the Light. I admit that drawing a card or putting a 2/1 into play isn't particularly amazing, but doing it instead of paying a cost is pretty sweet. Dragonewt Scholar into Dracomancer Rites is a turn 3 draw 3 if your Rummaged card is Trail of the Light. And slapping down a 2/1 and drawing 2 replacement cards is better. Are there any other Madness cards I haven't seen?

The discard outlets are mostly pretty bad. I don't want to play a Pyroxene Dragon even if I get free stuff for discarding. Other than Dragonewts who discard to draw cards and Imperial Dragoons who discard to flamewave your opponent's side of the board, are there discard outlets that give you something good for going that route?

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In other news, I am quite shit at playing Blood. I have a few pieces of some sort of forest bat tribal deck. Is that really bad? I like the theme of it and the little girl vampire queen of the bats is much more adorable than the weird miscelaneously Southern European vampire leader. I understand that the Castle of Forest Bats is not worth playing if you don't have all the forest bat combo pieces. But... is it worth playing if you do? I have obvious reservations about swarm strategies that rely on lords and amulets when there is an arbitrary five things in play limit. I can't tell if the Forest Bat payoffs are still just much worse than going deep on Forest Fairies, which is very similar.

-Username17

There are only the two madness cards so far as far as I know.

In terms of discard outlets - Altered Fate discards your whole hand to draw the same number of cards discarded, which is amazing if you have any discard combo cards on the field and not that useful otherwise. If you don't already have some Altered Fate in your Discard Dragon deck, look into it.

The typical aggro blood deck goes pretty far on the Bats - full sets of Vania, Vampire Princess, Veight, Vampire Noble, and Summon Bloodkin are pretty much core to every single form aggro blood deck. Some have 3 Night Hordes, others use 2 or less. I have seen a lot of aggro blood decks playing the bat castle in A2 ladder matchmaking, but lots of netdecking suggestions don't have it in there at all. It's pretty good at making face damage happen, I would try it out if you have the card already but probably not make them out of vials if you don't. It's usually played at the same time as a Summon Bloodkin attacks or a Vania evolves or whatever and the most common use of it is to trigger it with the 4 things on the field effect the same turn it comes into play - it's not really used to sit around pumping out bats slowly, it just adds a single bat and a bunch of burn damage the same turn it's played.

I play a sort of midrange blood deck a fair bit, it looks like this:

Blood Wolf x3
Vania Vampire Princess x3
Yurius, Levin Duke x3
Blood Pact x2
Razory Claws x3
Summon Bloodkin x3
Veight, Vampire Noble x3
Sadistic Night x1
Dark General X2
Wardrobe Raider x2
Night Horde x3
Fortunehunter Feena x2
Dance of Death x2
Mastema x2
Imp Lancer x2
Demonic Storm x2
Alucard x2

I am mostly happy with it's curve, but individual cards I keep wanting to switch out are Blood Pact, Dark General, and Mastema. I would probably sub out Blood Pacts for 2 more Sadistic Night, but I don't have the vials to make the Sadistic Nights at the moment. Not even sure what to replace Dark General and Mastema with, if anything.

You play Aggro Blood like Sligh/Red Deck Wins. Play a bunch of folowers and go face and then finish theme of with burn. The list I run is

3x Ambling Wraith
3x Crusebrand Vampire
3x Blood Wolf
3x Vania Vampire Princess
3x Yurius, Levin Duke
3x Goblin Mage
3x Veight, Vampire Noble
1x Wind God
3x Imp Lancer

3x Razory Claw
3x Summon Bloodkin
3x Demonic Strike
3x Night Horde
2x Dance of Death
1x Demonic Storm

I don't run the Castle but it seems like a lot of people do so I'd suggest testing it out if you already have them. Gameplay wise it's pretty straightforward the only thing is to be a little conservative with Vania. What you generally want to do is to play her and then immediately evolve her or Summon Bloodkin is only run her out turns 2-3 if she's the only creatue you can play that turn.

I haven't really netdecked yet, just cobbling shit around the stuff I pulled. My ID is 693242375 if anyone wants to newb it up in practice matches.

Likewise I'm 628600098, I think I'll brew us some budget decks for the people with less tuned lists to practice against.

Holy shit, that Swordcraft Expert Elite level practice deck curved the ever loving shit out of me. I lost consecutive games where I'd consistently trade 1 of my guys for 2 of theirs and clear the board but then this Otohime chick shows up and has her fuckton of goons kick me down a flight of stairs. I finally beat it after some tweaks to the shadowcraft deck I've been working on but now I'm scared to death of durdling.

Speaking of forest bats and Swordcraft, I opened my free initial packs, scrapped a bunch of cards for factions that didn't interest me, spent my vials building a forest bat deck that looks a bit like the one Mistborn posted, and took it on a test drive through the Bloodcraft singleplayer campaign. The second to last fight is against a Swordcraft deck, and it made me regret all my decisions. Swordcraft is better at putting weenies on the board and it's better at buffing those weenies and I'm not sure there's any reason for aggro blood to exist. I mean, yeah, my deck was cheap - less than 10k vials - but it's also not very good and throwing more vials at it won't significantly improve it.

I'm not sure what blood is supposed to do.

Speaking of forest bats and Swordcraft, I opened my free initial packs, scrapped a bunch of cards for factions that didn't interest me, spent my vials building a forest bat deck that looks a bit like the one Mistborn posted, and took it on a test drive through the Bloodcraft singleplayer campaign. The second to last fight is against a Swordcraft deck, and it made me regret all my decisions. Swordcraft is better at putting weenies on the board and it's better at buffing those weenies and I'm not sure there's any reason for aggro blood to exist. I mean, yeah, my deck was cheap - less than 10k vials - but it's also not very good and throwing more vials at it won't significantly improve it.

I'm not sure what blood is supposed to do.

Well, the same is true for White Weenie as compared to Red Deck Wins in Magic. When RDW is viable anyway, it is because it can use burn to remove early blockers and get in the last few points of damage, making up for its inferior creatures.

I realize Shadowverse isn't exactly the same as Magic, but it seems fairly isomorphic in this regard. So... what is the Bloodcraft burn suite like?

Shadoverse Burn in general isn't that awe inspiring but Bloodcraft get's Razory Claw which is 2 mana for 3 to any target. Imp lancer and Blood Wolf can also be seen a psudo burn spells in that they come down and then can immediately go face. Along with generic cards like Demonic Strike and Dance with Death you have the second best burn suite to Runecraft.

If you're losing with Aggro Blood it's probably because you're not going face enough. Your deck is not designed to control the board, it's designed to kill as quickly a possible. You gotta be brainlessly agressive, ignore everything that's not a ward and burn evo points just for 2 additional face damage.

Blood aggro features a lot of cards that are undercosted by about 1 mana that do two face damage to you when you play them. It also has a bunch of game shortening effects that do damage to both players. This setup seems pretty much destined to lose to other aggro decks that aren't paying 6-8 life over the course of the game for a few points of acceleration but are still trying to count to 20 as quickly as possible. If your first turn is to plant a blood garden that does 3 damage to both players and your opponent's first turn is to play a Quick Blader and face you for 1, that feels really bad. On the other hand, it seems really well placed to roll over Control lists. If some Havencraft player is gonna natter on about what their deck is gonna do the turn after they play their Seraph, they get a lotta blank stares from Aggro Blood, because one way or the other there is not going to be a turn 8 in that game.

Tempo Blood has a buch of things that trade well, gain life, or give incremental advantage when you sit there trading off with your opponent. The classic is a 1/3 for 2 creature that faces your opponent for 1 every time they put a creature in play. This deck seems to want to hover around 10 life, as it gets some sweet value plays when it is at 10 life or under, many of which cause it to gain life (for example: Diabolic Drain with Vengeance active does 4 damage to a follower and causes you to gain 2 life - probably causing you to lose Vengeance, all for only 1 mana). I can't tell if this deck is good, but it does seem like it could be well positioned to prey upon the kinds of aggro decks that prey uppon aggro blood.

The thing I'm not sure of is where the Forest Bats go. I get that they don't go in Control Blood, because that is all about staying alive long enough to drop a Bloody Mary and a Soul Dealer in the same turn and instant killing your opponent on turn 9. There doesn't seem like there's a lot of room for a turn four play of Vampire Princess plus Forest Bats to put out 3 bullshit creatures and face your opponent for 2. But that seems like a thing that Aggro or Tempo might be interested in.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Tempo Blood has a buch of things that trade well, gain life, or give incremental advantage when you sit there trading off with your opponent. The classic is a 1/3 for 2 creature that faces your opponent for 1 every time they put a creature in play. . . -Username17

Yurius is a 3x in every aggro blood I've seen. There are not many 1- or 2-drops that can deal 3 damage, so he generally gets to swing at the enemy's face 1-2 times depending on whether you went first or second. Swinging twice for one is as good as swinging once for 2, which means he will get in comarable face damage to a bear just in combat, without counting the damage from his ability. If you use removal spells or rush/ward/storm/fanfare damage creatures, you can potentially keep him in play for a really long time, and end up doing 5+ damage with his passive, especially against some swordcraft/woodcraft/runecraft token decks. (Or more commonly, end up baiting removal)

High defense creatures seem, in general, to be surprisingly valuable in aggro decks. Obviously you do have to be putting more total attack down than your opponent is early on, or they can just race you, but as long as you're winning the race, adding health is at least as good as and quite possibly better than average damage.

I've been playing for like a week, but it seems to me that it's actually tempo and control deck who favor high-damage creatures. Your whole objective is to trade creatures favorably; actually keeping creatures *alive* is not important. A High-Defense follower generates material advantage by killing a cheaper enemy without dying, but High-Attack followers generate advantage by killing something more expensive than itself, which seems to work out much more reliably. If your followers are dying as fast as you can summon them, you never get to swing at face, but you can use rush, ward, evolution, or just the threat of face damage to force enemies to fight you.

If you really need to push face damage through, high-defense creatures work very nicely. If you have a 3/3 on the board when I summon a 4/2, you can just trade followers on your turn. If I summon a 2/4 instead, then you either make the same trade over 2 turns while eating 2 damage to the face, blow an evolution point to become 5/5 (and yes, a 2/4 is much worse against a 5/5 than a 4/2 is), or you just swing face for 3 and receive 2 in return, which may actually be a very bad plan against aggro.

Is there a way to link my card collection on my iOS version of the game to the Steam version of the game?

My attempts to find an answer to this question have some up with the apparently serious proposal that I need to install Bluestacks, emulate the Android version, link the Android version to the iOS version through Facebook, and then link the Android version to Steam to complete this daisy chain of card-sharing fuckery.

Archmage wrote:Is there a way to link my card collection on my iOS version of the game to the Steam version of the game?

My attempts to find an answer to this question have some up with the apparently serious proposal that I need to install Bluestacks, emulate the Android version, link the Android version to the iOS version through Facebook, and then link the Android version to Steam to complete this daisy chain of card-sharing fuckery.

There is a Link Game function. You go to More, then Device Link and ask for a link code. Then it asks you for an email account, you give it to them, they email you the code, then you put the code in on the other game on the other device. No idea if it works iOS to Steam, but I see no reason why it shouldn't.

Anyway, I am still pretty bad at this game, and I am especially bad at playing Dragoncraft and Bloodcraft. I'm probably pretty bad at Havencraft too, but I haven't delved very deeply into it to be sure. So my possession of two Imperial Dragoons and a Soul Dealer does not seem to have helped me very much. My other Legendaries are:

• Moon Al-mi'raj (Havencraft Storm)
• Nephthys (Shadowcraft Nepthys)
• Daria, Dimension Witch (Runecraft Tempo or Runecraft D-Shit)

Given the choices, I decided to make a Shadowcraft Nephthys deck. Having one Nephthys is not really enough, as the deck does dramatically better when it can do a Nephthys turn on turn 8. Those turns are ridiculous. But I'm also not super keen to liquefy all my gold and silver cards to improve one deck at the moment, so that'll have to wait. Right now I seem to be winning about half the time at beginner ranks, which is fine.

What I'd really like is a plan for what to do with Shadows. Right now, I'm basically spending them on incidental zombies and incidental damage through stuff like Feathered Protectors and Skull Riders or Apprentice Necromancers or whatever. This seems like it's very clearly not what I am supposed to be doing. I think I'm supposed to feed my shadows into something big or at least have a consistent plan for the things. I can sometimes get a lot of shadows off a Nephthys turn, and I could get even more if I tweaked my deck to do that. Should I be looking at Path to Purgatory or Deathly Tyrants? Those combo kills seem shockingly affordable. But at the same time I also don't want to dump all my vials into a dark hole that doesn't work.

-Username17

Shadowcraft doesn't usually go Path to Purgatory - it's totally counter-synergistic to it's spend shadow plan, and also usually by the time you could even consider getting a 30-shadow plan off the ground as Shadowcraft, you could have long since just already killed the enemy with Mordecai or whatever. Shadowcraft has an amazing late-game finishing card in Mordecai already.

Deathly Tyrant is also super impractical. I have never actually seen a deck be able to play that card for the Necromancy effect - and without that effect, 6 for a 3/3 with Storm is a trap.

Aggro-style Shadowcraft gets a lot of mileage out of Phantom Howl - if you happen to have a Ghosthound Sexton it's shadow-neutral and spamming out a bunch of Storm 1/1 is just great for just doing damage or removal or whatever, and even without Sexton in play it's just a lot of potential Storm damage for a 4-drop card to be providing, and can serve as a finisher to kill after your opponent plays a board wipe effect. For slower Shadowcraft (generic control or Nepthys decks), I see a LOT of all of Foul Tempest, Death's Breath, and Undying Resentment as Necromancy outlets.

GGS wrote: I see a LOT of all of Foul Tempest, Death's Breath, and Undying Resentment as Necromancy outlets.

I'm all upon Foul Tempest and Undying Resentment. Undercosted removal is undercosted removal, and the Shadows costs to make those cards be undercosted removal seem very reasonable.

Death's Breath is not a Necromancy Outlet, and I'm not sure what card you actually meant. Death's Breath is the card where you pay 6 mana and get 3 Zombies. Which is an acceptable ratio of total power and toughness to cost, and in some circumstances it can trade up or push through for an aggro win. Also you get a shadow for playing the card and ultimately 3 more shadows when all the zombies die, so you're getting 4 shadows for one card if that's important to you. And of course it's a spell and not a creature, which means that it doesn't use up a Nephthys slot that could have gone to something with a Last Words effect.

Now that being said, I still don't particularly like Death's Breath, because filling up all my slots with garbage is kind of bad. Nephthys and Phantom Howl both fill up all your empty slots, so if you don't have a lot of extra slots those cards are bad. Phantom Howl needs you to have at least 4 open slots to be doing more total damage than Demonic Strike, and while you can break it up sometimes and kill multiple weak enemies it is a lot worse than Foul Tempest when doing that, and even when you gang up on a single enemy it's a lot worse than Undying Vengeance for that purpose. Phantom Howl only justifies itself if you routinely cast it with four or five empty slots and you go to face with most or all of it.

If I'm going to be cluttering up my board, I want it to be because I'm Urding an Attendant of Night. That is a three slot clutter I can feel good about ending the turn with on turn four. Ending the turn with three zombies in play on turn 6 just sounds awful. I get that there are Shadow Aggro decks that want that as the top of their curve (or a pseudo-top with Lord Atomy), but it seems absolutely awful in Nephthys. I see people doing it, but it seems like a huge nonbo.

-Username17

Looking online, Death's Breath is incorrectly not given it's necromancy effect in at least one website. In-game and on this website it's correctly shown with Necromancy (6): Give +0/+1 and Ward to allied Zombies.

Having 3 different ward 2/3 on the field is a GREAT way to completely fuck several decks, mostly aggro and storm-based decks - things like Roaches. It going out with Necromancy guarantees you survive until turn 8 when you can play bombs like Mordecai or Nephthys. It's not as good an aggressive play as others, I agree, and I wouldn't put it in an aggro deck.

The aforementioned shadowcraft deck I made also happens to pack a Nephthys and Death's Breath so this tangent is definitely relevant to my interests. Anyway, yeah, so far Death's Breath is either a dead draw, a mildly shitty win more card that sometimes is enough for my liches to go face or a beautiful perfect unicorn that shuts the door on last gasp weenies+wind god bullshit. I resent the shit out of it at times but I predict that it'll be many, many vials before it's an obvious cut.

So, I continue to tinker with my bloodcraft bat deck, and I am going to have to add my voice to Frank's "huh" concerning vampiric fortress. In practice, it never seems to do much. Let's break it down:

Vampiric fortress is a terrible turn 2 play. You have no bats on the table, so it's just a dead drop that does nothing on the turn it comes out when you could have played a bloodwolf or a yurius.

Vampiric fortress is an okay turn 3 play if you have bats on the table, which means your turn 2 play was summon nightkin because that is the only way to make that happen. Problem: playing summon nightkin on turn 2 makes Vania cry. Oh well, sorry Vania. Let's do it. We roll turn 2 summon nightkin into turn 3 vampiric fortress. How's that look at the start of turn 4? Well, your side of the board is probably full; an ambling wraith/cursebrand vampire and three forest bats. Vampiric fortress does literally nothing on a full board, and you're also out of room to play creatures, so you're going to want to feed a creature to one of your opponent's creatures. That's damage you aren't sending to the enemy's dome, which is bad, but you do it. So, what's going to happen at the END of turn 4? Well, vampiric fortress is either going to give you another bat or explode for 1-3 damage (or possibly do nothing), depending on how many bats you threw at your opponent's creatures and whether or not you played creatures out of your hand.

So let's seriously recap that. What has vampiric fortress actually accomplished? It gave you a bat on turn 3, but you burnt that bat (well, probably the ambling wraith 1-drop, and not literally the bat, but they both do 1 damage so who cares) to plink a creature. And then it gave you another 1/1 that won't even be able to attack until turn 5. Or it domed the opponent for - at best - three damage. But if it domed your opponent for three damage, then you'll be starting turn 5 with nothing but three 1/1's and that's fucking awful, so hopefully it only domed them for 1-2. The tally thus far - by the start of turn 5 - is that we paid two mana for a card that reads "deal 2 damage to the enemy and 1 damage to an enemy's follower" or "summon 1 forest bat with storm next turn, and summon 1 forest bat with storm the turn after that."

That's fucking awful. Vampiric fortress is a card that you aren't even going to consider playing until turn 3 and needs 3-4 turns (and frankly somewhat ideal board conditions) to be competitive with your other 2-drops. It just doesn't fit in the schedule an aggro deck is trying to keep.

Whipstitch wrote:The aforementioned shadowcraft deck I made also happens to pack a Nephthys and Death's Breath so this tangent is definitely relevant to my interests. Anyway, yeah, so far Death's Breath is either a dead draw, a mildly shitty win more card that sometimes is enough for my liches to go face or a beautiful perfect unicorn that shuts the door on last gasp weenies+wind god bullshit. I resent the shit out of it at times but I predict that it'll be many, many vials before it's an obvious cut.

Knowing that it gives out +0/+1 and Ward for the Zombies it makes, that seems a pretty defensible choice. Especially if you can manage to get enough copies that you can go with zero Followers in the 6 drop slot. I mean, obviously any time a 6 drop of any kind shows up on a Nephthys turn it does so at the expense of a Lurching Corpse or Mordekai or something that has a Last Word that is "totally sweet." Right now I'm using the Ghostly Rider in the 6 drop slot, which is not useless when it comes up (it gives Ward to one of the Liches when it appears), but it's obviously way short of killing a dude or making a 4/4, let alone murder stabbing the enemy's biggest dude and giving you life back like Underworld Watchman Khawy (who should obviously be the only 7 drop creature in the deck).

The Nephthys deckbuilding constraints are pretty weird, and it definitely rewards you for figuring out how to make certain cost slots in your deck empty - or at least empty of Follower cards. I should probably remove all the 1-drop creatures from the deck even though they are useful just so that Nepthys gives out more murder stabbings and incidental liches. It's weird to be bending the deck this much around a card that I only have one copy of.

-Username17