The Omen of the Ten arrives in the fantasy anime world of Shadowverse, a digital CCG. The Omen of the Ten is also Shadowerse 10th expansion and introduces the ten Omen as ten new legendary followers. What excites me about this expansion is the new mechanics and themes being introduced to classes. We will be taking a look at the new mechanics as well as the new Omens.

Class Specific

Forestcraft – Omen of Unkilling

Unkilling is themed around lowering enemy follower’s attack. Just like Batman. I don’t kill. I just break your bones, thus lowering your strength.

The mechanic doesn’t excite me as a powerful effect. There aren’t enough cards that care about your opponent’s minions being at lower or 0 attack. Sure, low attacks help your Forestcraft followers trade better. But rather than lowering attack, just kill them with Fanfare damage. Also, there is a limit on how good this mechanic can be. It isn’t meaningful versus control or combo decks.

Izudia, Omen of Unkilling does point in an interesting direction because he lowers the max health of the opponent. This sparks a possibility of building a control style Forestcraft deck, that finishes the game with Izudia, and 6 more damage. Is it too slow? Perhaps, there is something new to try here. Izudia also could be a tool against the Tenko Haven matchups. After your opponent heals out of your reach, set him straight to 6 for the rest of the game.

Swordcraft – Omen of Usurpation

Swordcraft has found some flashy loot. The Usurpation cards all deal with acquiring one of the four Glided Loot at random: Glided Blade, Glided Goblet, Glided Boots, Glided Necklace.

This mechanic remains me of the Spare Part mechanic in Hearthstone. However, the Glided items were just more consistent in their possible effects. The most powerful item appears to be Glided Boots, enabling minions to Rush without wasting the Evolve point. The Usurpation package looks great because they create Glided items and then synergize off playing Glided items. Octrice, Omen of Usurpation is a specific standout as she is cheap, has an Enhance effect and her unique effect can remove pesky Last Words, and give you the advantage instead. Quite stacked, if you know what I mean.

Usurpation strength is not that it is inherently unfair or do anything crazy. But rather together as a package, its followers and spells reinforce the power of Swordcraft as the aggro/midrange deck.

Runecraft – Omen of Truth

The Truth is in spellboosting. I am not excited that spellboost is the supported Runecraft theme since the top Runecraft decks in Rotation (Giant Chimera) and Unlimited (D-Shift) are both spellboosted focus. Still, these cards are quite powerful, especially Apostle of Truth. It is a tutor effect and immediately spellboosts the card you draw. This in conjunction with Concentration and Fate’s Hand adds a lot of consistency in the spellboost decks. Raio, the Omen of Truth also adds consistency by boosting all your cards in the deck, allowing you to top deck with massive efficiency.

I suppose the truth is magic is everything?!

Dragoncraft – Omen of Disdain

The Disdain mechanic focused on taking damage and surviving, triggering of the pain. It is great to see the damage mechanic touched on this expansion. For such a theme to be successful, you need a mix of activators and cards that can benefit from being damaged. The mechanic is supported with good cheap utility followers and a spell: Servant of Disdain and Disciple of Disdain, as well as a useful activator and removal in Disdainful Rending.

Apostle of Disdain can be potentially really good, due to Storm. It reminds me of Frothing Beserkers and pre-nerf Warsong Commander. Galmieux, Omen of Disdain, in particular, is an extremely powerful mid game card. It has good stats for its cost, activates your other Disdain cards, and has an Enhance effect to help it in the late game.

I am excited to play from Disdain Dragoncraft, but I fear there aren’t enough cards that care about taking damage in Rotation. Still, the Apostle of Disdain and Galmieux, Omen of Disdain will probably be powerful enough to slot into existing Dragoncraft decks.

Shadowcraft – Omen of Silence

Shadowcraft’s new theme isn’t as straightforward as the other classes. The Silence followers care about hating on creatures with certain abilities. For example, the Apostle of Silence instantly kills any follower with Ward.

Rulenye, Omen of Silence is an interesting card that is tech against spell based combo decks, like Runecraft and Lindworm. It is a continuous effect but does require some fuel to keep going. Timing is going to be crucial as one has to know when they need to buy time to tempo out these spell decks.

Mainly, I see these cards as tech cards, just like Big Soul Hunter. These cards will see play depending on the meta, and bolster Shadowcraft’s existing decks. Silent Purge is standout because of its cheap and flexible nature.

Bloodcraft – Omen of Lust

Lust deals with your leader taking damage and sometimes grant benefits to the opponent’s leader. The biggest payoff is Valnareik, Omen of Lust. Valnareik both self-boost itself and has Storm, parts of potential game enders. There are already several cheap cards in Bloodcraft from other expansions that do deal damage to your leader.

Many of these cards fit into an aggressive Bloodcraft deck. For instance, Wings of Lust is a loaded spell, providing a great buff and Drain. These cards can also be used to support Darkfeast Bat decks, with added consistency.

Havencraft – Omen of Repose

Haven move back to is control roots this expansion. By being a pacifist, you get free bonuses. You will normally get one trigger of the effects on the turn you play the follower. While a control style mechanic, you can also think of it just having an extra choice in whether or not to attack for the turn. In general, the Repose cards don’t impress me. Their incremental effects are too minor to get any real advantage. Apostle of Repose just annoys me. Its Repose effect costs an Evolve point, but you are incentives not to attack even though you since given it Rush.

The most impressive card is Realm of Repose. The leader damage deduction helps deal with the burst damage of Runecraft’s Giant Chimera or Dragoncraft’s Lindworm. This card has potential in Tenko Haven, a life gain control deck that doesn’t attack often anyway.

Marwynn, Omen of Repose doesn’t have anything to do with the pacifist Repose mechanic. Instead, when it enters the battlefield, it grants a symmetrical effect. This has potential in a Tempo Havencraft deck, where you can take advantage of the immediate card draw and the amulet countdown. The free play point ramp is a bit concerning though. Marwynn is an interesting option, but might just turn out to be too inconsistent.

Portalcraft – Omen of Destruction

Destruction involves destroying your own Portalcraft followers. It is similar to a Shadowcraft theme but still feels like a continuation of the discarding Artifact sub-theme. Overall, this effects of these Destruction followers are very good. Specifically, there is the Disciple of Destruction gives card draw and the Apostle of Destruction that enables combos and general utility.

Lishenna, Omen of Destruction grants a special Amulet, Destruction in White, which in turns grant Destruction in Black. This offers an alternate win condition of Portalcraft. But there is a lot of work to be done here. You need to destroy several of your own followers to lower the cost of the cards. And you need to ensure you save an Evolve point for Lishenna. There is a lot to do there, but it is a pretty flashy way to win.

Neutral Omens

Since we covered all the Omens of the Classes, let’s also touch on the

Gilnelise, Omen of Craving, immediately, stands out as good for good wide strategies like in Swordcraft or Forestcraft. And then it could continue to hurt with Ambush. The draw 5 is potentially really good in refuel the aggressive decks as well. You are also the first player to use the extra cards, lowering the downside of the effect.

Mjerrabaine, Omen of One is a deckbuilding card promoting singleton play. However, it feels like Mjerrabaine is super singleton because its effect only takes into place if you have a single minion in play. This makes only certain archetypes possible, like a more midrange or control version, like Ramp Dragoncraft or Amulet based Havencraft. This makes it in stark contrast to Gilnelise. I think Mijerrabaine is asking too much for too little gain.

Invocations

Cards with Invocation are played immediately from the deck when a certain condition is met. These cards only exist in half of the classes: Runecraft, Bloodcraft, Havencraft, and PortalCraft. Each of these cards has a different condition that has to be met, some much easier than others. This mechanic has the potential to be extremely powerful as they are a free resource and also thin out your deck (getting some terrible Patches flashback).

Havencraft has a very easy Invocation; all you need is to be 2pp and you got a free amulet on the field. Of course, you can only have one on the field at a time. That is why the amulet doesn’t give any straight up card advantage but rather just supports a particular amulet playstyle. If you include this in your deck, you don’t have to mulligan for a 2 drop at the beginning of the game.

Flauros is a sizeable minion in Bloodcraft. It has great potential is you can trigger the Invocation and summon multiple Flauros to the field at once. The Last Words is quite good in staying alive, and quite sizeable so I don’t think it would fit in Vengeance decks. Rather it could fit in more Control based decks.

Enervating Mail is extremely powerful for Portalcraft. Its Invocation fits in the new Destruction theme that Omen of the Ten introduced but can still be slowly activated in other Artifacts decks. Also, once triggered you can play several Mails from the deck at once. What makes the Mail powerful is that is a suitable card on a curve, with alright stats and a card advantage Evolve effect. It takes away the weakness that should exist on Invocation cards. It is good on curve as well in the late game. With no Portalcraft cards rotating out, I am very worried that Enervating Mail push Portalcraft over the top despite the nerfs it has gotten.

Prophetess of Creation is the hardest Invocation this set to accomplish. Prophetess is created to be a win condition of a control deck as an extremely hard to remove minion. There also the risk in just drawing an essentially dead card in Runecraft. When there is a more reliable and consistent win condition as Giant Chimera, I don’t see Prophetess seeing play. I chuckled at the Evolve state; it really doesn’t need any more attack.

The PicK

Omen of the Ten introduced a suite of mighty new tools into Rotation, and hopefully, the new deck types will surface to be top contenders. I wish some of the classes had more cohesive set design. Havencraft, for example, didn’t have a really great set of Repose cards and its Omen doesn’t even feature the mechanic. The classes that excite me the most are Swordcraft and Dragoncraft. I really want to see Galmieux and Octrice tear up the midgame. Portalcraft and Runecraft are probably going to remain as top meta decks.

While this article only focused on the new themes and mechanics, there are also plenty of other cards that might be impactful for the meta. I am not going to go over all of them, but one I look forward to building the most is Anne, Mysterian Prodigy.

Thanks for reading. If you like, comment on what you think are going to be most exciting cards in the new Shadowverse rotation.

Author: XinVL

Cards and Art: Cygames – Shadowverse

Edit: Correction, Prophetess of Creation, can’t be destroyed by Bane. Alright not as easy to remove, but still just a big creature without Storm.