Just in time before set 7.3 Rise to Power gets released I’m back with my metagame article and with a new spoiler on top. Let’s start with the new spoiler.

I love tribal cards and it’s great that I got a new addition to Zombie decks as a spoiler for you. Some of you might know that I wrote a solforgegame.com front page article about Zombies and tried many different Zombie decks. I could see this card pushing the archetype and I think there is some cool AN Zombies deck with the new Nekrium legendary Cyrus, the Merciless out there. Even if Cyrus kills your own Zombies Cercee’s Call will be able to revive them. The lvl1 is definitely the biggest drawback of this card and we have to see if it’s possible to level Cercee’s call without falling behind.

What I didn’t realize first is that Indomitable Fiend is also a Zombie, so Cercee’s Call will definitely be a great addition to those decks and help them against Poison.

I’m definitely looking forward to brew with this new card and the rest of set 7.3.

Now let’s move on to the set 7.2 metagame. With set 7.2 four new heroics and legendaries were introduced – for an overview you can find them all here.

The biggest impact of those cards had Frontline Combatant. He definitely improved a lot of Alloyin based decks and is a strong standalone card. Mostly that’s because removal or damage effects are very rare in Alloyin. On top of that he can provide 8 points of damage as a blocker against creatures with 7 or lower attack.

While Murderous Necromancer looks insane on paper it is merely a good card in the current meta. With many removal effects around the Necromancer often gets removed before she can activate.

Primeval Ancient can be easily splashed into mono Uterra lists and is often a good opener and great against burn. He definitely brought Dino’s back to the current metagame and also seems some play in AU control decks.

I saw quite a few brews utilizing Avarice the Insatiable and right now the best usage of Avarice seems to be in AT decks. I tried Avarice in an AT Burn deck, but while it looks like a natural fit (it’s also a Dragon and the deck is full of spells) the random spell selection is often a huge drawback and the (lvl1) body doesn’t make up for it. Pion wrote a full article an AT Avarice Brews Contructed Pioneering: Dreaming of Dragons.

I didn’t see any of the new Heroics that target specific factions. While the scaling on the new spells is not too bad, none of the cards really help in problematic matchups (e.g. Mono Nekrium is one of the easier matchups for AT Burn, repress doesn’t help against AU Control).

The old tier 1 archetypes (Poison, Burn, AU Control, Mono Nekrium) remained mostly unchanged, although AT Aggro Alyssa and Mono A Armor made a new appeareance. For me AT Alyssa takes the spot as the best aggressive archetype right now. Another deck that recently emerged again is AU Flex (/One Punch) – I’m not even sure how to call that deck exactly, but it basically tries to create one huge creature with breakthrough and tons of armor.

Mono A Armor

3 Aegis Knight

3 Frontline Combatant

3 Gauntlets of Sulgrim

3 Ironbound Reinforcements

3 Nexus Aeronaut

3 Nexus Bubble

3 Oreian Justicar

3 Patron of Anvillon

3 Relic Hunter

3 Steelforged Avatar

I tried several versions of a similar deck myself, but couldn’t come up with a version that I was happy with. I’m glad this deck won the last solforgeladder titanium only tournament, because I think it’s one of the most innovative competitive decks I have seen lately. It’s great to see Ironbound Reinforcements, Steelforged Avatar and Patron of Anvillion all in one mono Alloyin deck. They allow the deck to be aggressive enough to race control decks (with high attack armored creatures) and are key to the overall success of this deck. Oreian Justicar seems like a good meta call, while the rest of the deck is basically the full Alloyin Armor shell.

AN Ooze



3 Crux, Metamind Rogue

2 Cypien Experimentation

3 Frontline Combatant

2 Gauntlets of Sulgrim

3 Grimgaunt Devourer

3 Lichmane Dragon

3 Necromoeba

3 Nexus Aeronaut

2 Ordnance Captain

3 Relic Hunter

3 Spiritcleave

This list is brought to you by JockeD and features one of my favorite cards, Necomoeba. The list is a great mix between grow wide with the Ooze tokens + Relice Hunter and grow big with Grimgaunt Devourer, Gauntlets of Sulgrim and Cypien Experimentation. It’s one of the few decks that feature the formation keyword, while being competitive enough to reach platinum ranks.

AT Avarice

3 Alyssa, Strifeborn

3 Avarice, the Insatiable

3 Cypien Experimentation

3 Firestorm

3 Frontline Combatant

2 Gauntlets of Sulgrim

2 Ironmind Acolyte

2 Lucid Echoes

3 Oratek Battlebrand

3 Shatterbolt

3 Trial by Combat

I took this from Pions article mentioned above. Here is what he says about the deck:

“The deck plays a lot faster [than more controlling AT Avarice builds], and can win out of nowhere just like any Alyssa deck, primarily by using Trial by Combat. Against Burn decks if you can land an Alyssa and grow her with a spell and then setting her up with a Cypien Experimentation you are good to go. You can even Shatterbolt your own Alyssa to grow her despite her armor! The deck can play a control game against decks that do not play giant creatures, with Sulgrim and Frontline Combatant building a controlling board. This deck performed much better generally but specifically against the faster decks. I’ve been steadily climbing the Platinum standings with it.”

AT Aggro Alyssa

3 Alyssa, Strifeborn

3 Blitzmane, the Destroyer

3 Brimstone Tyrant

1 Cypien Experimentation

3 Frontline Combatant

3 Korok, Khan of Kadras

3 Nexus Aeronaut

1 Oratek Explosives

3 Relic Hunter

2 Shatterbolt

2 Trial by Combat

3 Warhound Raider

This is another list brought to you JockeD and is an aggressive take on AT Alyssa. What impressed me most about this deck is that it’s very consistent even with 6 solbind cards. It can happen from time to time that you get a “bad” hand full of tokens (and only 1 non token card), but other very powerful turns easily make up for those hands. On top of that you can almost always trigger Brimstone Tyrant when you draw him and the agressive lineup with Warhound Raider, Korok and Blitzmane is great in many matchups – especially against burn and AU Control. I also like that the single Oratek Explosives and the Cypien Experimentation make the deck very unpredictable and even more agressive. Let me also mention that JockeD won the Titanium Challenge Season 3 tournament with that list.

AT Burn

This archetype remained unchanged – I don’t really think that Avarice is an improvement for the burn deck, that’s why I refer to my old set 7.1 metagame analysis for a decklist.

AT Fastbots

The only difference for fastbots is that it now plays Frontline Combatant and it has to free up some slots for him. I removed 1 Nexus Bubble, 1 Aegis Knight and 1 Automaton Prime to add the Combatant.

Mono U Poison Dino



3 Bron, Wild Tamer

2 Demara’s Pitguard

2 Dissolve

3 Enduring Vitality

3 Leyline Vermin

2 Lysian Shard

2 Malice Hermit

3 Patron of Deepwood

2 Primeval Ancient

3 Roaming Warclaw

3 Shardplate Toxoid

2 Uterradon Ridgeback

This is a brew I came up with and optimized myself. I used it for grinding to titanium last season with a winrate slighly above 75%. It is much more high variance than my pure Mono U Poison list from set 7.1, but utilizing the Dinosaurs along with Bron, Wild Tamer fixes a lot of average/bad matchups of the poison archetype. This deck is now much stronger against (AU) Control, AT Burn and Mono Nekrium, but is overall higher variance and harder to play correctly. Just let me give you a few advice:

– don’t set up Bron combos in advance (unless with a Primeval Ancient with trigger), better set up Leyline Vernim triggers with your poison cards

– only play 1 vitality against control decks (Wipe Clean!), play an upgraded Bron whenever you can, play Toxoid in PL1 against AU Control (Esperian Sage!)

– try to get 2 vitality going against AT Burn – this way an on level Bron kills an on level Steelscale Dragon

NT Fiend

Core:



3 Burnout

3 Death Current

3 Firestorm

3 Immortal Echoes

3 Indomitable Fiend

2-3 Remembrance

3 Undying Legacy

Tech cards:



1 Chaos Twister

1 Dreadbolt

2 Epidemic

1 Grave Pact

2 Shatterbolt

1 Spiritcleave

1 Vyric’s Embrace

This is an archetype that gained popularity again last season. It now doesn’t play Ice Grasp anymore, but concentrates on the powerful Nekrium and Tempys spells for removal (while setting up Immortal Echoes with Indomitable Fiend). The nice thing about this deck is that the core doesn’t have that many legendaries (5-6) and you can mix in any of the Tempys and Nekrium removal for the rest of the cards. For a similar decklist also see Gard’s Solforge F2P run. Let me also mention that I saw some more AN Fiend again, but the decklist remained mostly unchanged (exchange Epidemic for Sonic Pulse).

Mono N Ignir

3 Death Current

2 Ebonskull Knight

2 Epidemic

3 Ignir, Khan of Ashur

2 Immortal Echoes

3 Leyline Demon

3 Patron of Tarsus

3 Spiritcleave

2 Varna, Immortal King

3 Xerxes, the Executioner

2 Zimus, the Undying

Tech Choices:



2 Murderous Necromancer

2 Nug Fury Fists

2 Lichmane Dragon

1 Zimus the Undying + 1 Varna, Immortal King

2 Demonweb Watcher

The Mono Nekrium deck also didn’t change too much. I listed the most popular tech choices for the last 2 cards. Murderous Necromancer, Nug, Fury Fists and Lichmane Dragon are all valid tech choices from the new mini expansions, but you can also take the more traditional build where play a full set of Zimus and Varna. Another very neat idea is to play Demonweb Watcher, because Mono Nekrium struggles against AT Alyssa and burn and it helps in both matchups.

Right now is a great time to play Leyline Demon, because many decks are playing free spells. This is one of the reasons why this archetype still remains powerful.

AU One Punch



2 Deepbranch Prowler

3 Relic Hunter

2 Aegis Wings

2 Aetherphage

3 Oros, Deepwood’s Chosen

3 Lysian Shard

3 Shardclaw Crusher

3 Cypien Experimentation

2 Warmonger Mod

3 Ambriel’s Edict

3 Uterradon Ridgeback

1 Pummel Pack

While the strategy of this deck is very singular, it can run over decks that don’t run that many direct removals in PL1 already. It is also basically the best deck against AT Burn, because the burn deck will at some point fail to remove one of the huge threats and then gets run over very quickly. I added Aetherphage to this archetype to help against Nekrium decks that run direct removal – you will struggle against those decks anyways, so you might as well add more buffs and be even more greedy. There is also the neat interaction between Shardclaw Crusher and Relic Hunter – the lvl 1 Crusher will give Relic Hunter a +10/+10 buff 🙂

AU Control

3 Chrogias

3 Esperian Sage

3 Glowstride Stag

3 Killion, Infinity Warden

3 Malice Hermit

3 Oros, Deepwood’s Chosen

2 Othra, Apex Predator

2 Shardplate Toxoid

3 Ambriel’s Edict

2 Dendrify

2 Energy Prison / Sonic Pulse

1 Wipe Clean

This is one of the typical AU Control lists out there. This deck is really good in reaching PL3 while leveling it’s own threats. There are a few decks out there (like AT Alyssa), which can race AU Control before reaching PL3, but sometimes 2 well timed Ambriel’s Edict can be enough to get you there.