Omens of the Past spoilers are rolling in! We got a chance to play with a few last weekend, and it only made me more excited to get my hands on the cards for real so I can build some decks! A few of the revealed cards are very obvious build-arounds, so I’m putting them in shells to maximize their effectiveness and hoping some new cards fill in the gaps.

Aerialist Trainer

Aerialist trainer is the card that best fits into an already-existing deck: Hooru flyers AKA PJ Pants. Pajama Pants hasn’t really been a good deck since Gilded Glaive was a powersurge weapon, but a source of pump and card advantage that also a solid ground blocker could be just what it needs to return to prominence. Get out your Auric Runehammers and Levitates, because some aegis flyers are getting pumped up!

+4 Aerialist Trainer

This shell isn’t far off being playable right now, and WifeOutAce got 7 wins in the event last weekend on her first run with a deck very similar to this one. Sometimes the opponent doesn’t have 2 removal spells for each aegis unit + weapon you present and they just die. I actually hope this deck isn’t very good, as it is very uninteractive, but I’m sure it will see substantial play in the first few weeks of Omens’s release.

Bloodcall Invoker

Xenan Control is a deck that I’ve loved for a long time that is just on the cusp of being good, and if Bloodcall Invoker is any indication, it will be quite powerful once it gets some multifaction support. You want health gain in control decks already, and getting a solid body that rewards you for gaining health is just gravy. I’m going to be looking to build something like this:

+4 Bloodcall Invoker

Xenan needs the most help in its 2 and 3 drop slots, so hopefully there’s a strong multifaction unit for Time and Shadow like Feln Bloodcaster, Knight-Chancellor Siraf, or Combrei Healer. If it has Lifesteal, all the better. Bloodcall Invoker really wants you to gain health the turn you play him, so having a Lifesteal unit in play already before turn 5 would be great. The Lifesteal unit probably needs to cost 3, as the 4 drop slot is kind of locked up with Sandstorm Titan and Steward of the Past, and I can’t imagine there being a 4-drop better than either of them.

Another point of awkwardness is the big health gain effects (Lumen Defender and Umbren Reaper) all cost 5. Furthermore, you often want to defensively trade with Umbren Reaper with a control deck like this, and Invoker doesn’t trigger on health gained on the opponent’s turn. I would love a way to gain health on a 3 drop or 6 drop so that I can cut Reaper entirely.

Calderan Cradle

Calderan Cradle is the most combo-oriented card spoiled so far, as its value is limited in a regular deck of just units and burn spells. If you are only playing 25 spells in your deck, you’ll be lucky to play 2 Dragons from a turn-4 Cradle before the game ends, and at a long enough delay that the card won’t be worth 4 power. So how do you break the rules and make it good? Why, with Echo of course!

Each Echo spell provides 2 ticks on the Cradle, and I you have an Echo spell with a Second Sight that’s 80% of a Dragon right there! It breaks even further if you can give Second Sight Echo with Elysian trailblazer, as that’s an extra spell count (and card drawn) every turn for 2 power by playing a Second Sight and putting the other Echo copy back on top of your deck. If you manage to Nesting Avaisaur a Second Sight to make it cost 0 and then give it Echo, you are only another copy of Second Sight away from infinite spell triggers and discarding to hand size every turn for 0 power!

This is very difficult to set up, of course, but in a deck designed to stall the game and draw cards I’m sure it can be done, and I’m definitely going to try. Here’s what I’m thinking for a starting point:

+4 Calderan Cradle

This is the most speculative list in this article, and any good spells in Omens in any of these 3 factions could make their way into the deck and change things. Some Jotun Hurler + Unstable Form silliness could easily be added over some removal and a sweeper effect would be wonderful, for example. The base point, though, is that you can play one bad relic (Cradle), a few medium support cards (Excavate, Nesting Aviasaur, Elysian Trailblazer), and a pile of removal and sometimes get awesome infinite combo wins. Trailblazer actually isn’t that bad to just cast, as doubling any spell besides Seek power isn’t a bad deal.

Master’s Lesson

Master’s Lesson is almost certainly not a competitive card, but there is an almost-perfect deck for it: Hero of the People Chalice. It sounds ridiculous, but hear me out here.

+3 Master’s Lesson

Hero of the People wants you to play units with lots of skills. Silverwing Familiar and Karmic Guardian have lots of useful skills. They both also desperately want to be pumped to make all of their skills more impactful, and that’s where Crystalline Chalice comes in. All of these units are great with Master’s Lesson – even as 4 power draw 3 it is very solid, and sometimes you’ll get a dream Lesson for 6+ on Hero of the People and steamroll to victory.

Maybe this deck has too many moving parts between the units with skills, the Chalices, and the new spell, but it has a lot of strong synergies, and Karmic Guardian is surprisingly playable on her own.

I’m starting to get very excited for set 2, and I know everyone else is also hyped for new cards, new decks, and new sweet jank. I’m definitely going to stream decks with all of these skeletons and many more, and I hope to report some good findings in few weeks.

Until next time, may all of your ideas bear fruit.

LightsOutAce

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