Hello Spellweavers!

I am Rinriet, a Spellweaver regular with three Masters Championship titles. I welcome you back to my article series, where I analyze a deck every week.

For an extensive list of competitive decks, you can check out my What is META? article.

This week we are going to get into one deck with a long history in the competitive scene: Corruption Control.

The main purpose of this deck is to control your enemy board by constantly killing everything, while you slowly grind your way to victory with life drain and infinite value cards like Tombs of the Damned or Sanctum of the Void .

Why should you try this deck?

- It is powerful. It’s quite consistent. Also it has appeared in every single Masters Championship for more than an year.

- It can win against almost everything if you get the right cards and play carefully.

- Its basics are learnt easily, but mastering the deck requires skill and practice.

What are the deck’s weaknesses?

- It lacks instant spells. Decks with swift creatures can be difficult to deal with.

- Until the mid/late game the deck has problems dealing with high HP creatures like Ancient Treant .

Deck List

Hero: 1x Nefaros, Necromantic Prince

How to play the deck?

- Try to guess what your opponent is playing before confirming your starting hand. Against each matchup you want some specific cards; for example, against One Turn Heal you should play several Curse of Rysha s, and against Soldiers Word of Pain is a really important card.

- Level order is simple in terms of colors (you play only black :D) but the fact that you have two cards that scale very well with levels requires careful planning. For instance, at 2 mana 1 level you can consider going second level even if you don’t have any card to play, so next turn you could kill a 3HP creature with Consume Spirit .

- Most of the matches you will go up to 3 levels. But sometimes you will need more, usually to Consume Spirit a 4HP creature.

- In the first turns you usually focus on clearing the enemy creatures. Against slower decks, you Mesmerizing Spirit s and Curse of Rysha can be effective and also quite annoying.



- Choose your removal spells carefully. Try to predict your rival’s next turns and save some specific removal for that.

- Although Mesmerizing Spirit s are a good play in the early turns, you can make the most value of them once your opponent is very low on cards. At that point you will most likely hit an important card!

- Bloodwitch Harpy can be awesome for dealing with cards like Insatiable Ghoul , but when you have Tombs of the Damned on the field, she will kill them. If you play her, be sure to know why.

- One feature of Spellweaver that you have to consider is that cards that trigger at the same moment will trigger in the same order they were played. So, if you first played Tombs and then Harpy, you will be able to sacrifice the newly summoned Zombie. But if you played first the Harpy, the Zombie will be summoned after the sacrifice so you will be forced to sacrifice other creatures (or nothing).

- Talking about triggers… if any of your cards get Haunt ed, you can Haunt the enemy Haunt!

- If you can get a Haunt rolling, your Necromantic Cult will be devastating. You can sacrifice your souls to make it very big and clear the enemy board very easily.

- Pandemonium of Darkness is useful for two things: be played for the drain effect to finish an opponent, and to break a Johrails Silencer .

- Your win condition is to beat down your enemy. You have a lot of ways to do that. Sometimes you will have a long run where the power of Haunt and Tombs plus your hero skill will be enough to overpower your opponent. Sometimes you can even rush a slow opponent if you get an early Tombs along with Consume Spirits.

Alternative card choices

- Reanimate : If you want late game potential to play Succubus after Succubus until you win, be sure to put some of them. It is also a very good card if you are running…

- Bezarok, Abyss Gatekeeper : An absolute beast and the best target for Reanimate. You don’t need him most of the time, but against other decks with a powerful late game Bezarok could be the key to winning. He is quite versatile, allowing you to kill threats, drain 3 life (summon Succubus) or even decay the opponent’s deck (summon Aezerhis and Infernal Vultures ). If you fear decks such as Wisdom Dominion control, be sure to add him.

- Reign of the Underworld : This card’s effect is unique and weird, but it can do three important things: first, stall the game against aggro and midrange decks; second, their Enchained Soul s: are easy to kill with Suffocate or Word of Pain; third, and most important, you can sacrifice your creatures and then use your hero power to bring them back, allowing for a very reliable Succubus drain-train.

What are the common matchups?

The favorable matchups are usually midrange ones that need to slowly build a board presence to win.

But this is a deck for which it is hard to generalize matchups. Spell-heavy decks can suffer if you hit your Curse of Ryshas. High speed creatures can get wiped out with Suffocate. Noxious Fumes and Word of Pain help a lot against aggro.

This deck has ways to deal with nearly everything if you are skilled enough!



The unfavourable matchups are:

Aggro or combo with high HP creatures because they can become hard to kill early game, and aggro that spreads too much if you don’t hit your Suffocate.

Swift creatures and direct face damage can beat you easily if they hit a perfect hand.

Also decks with spell removal can beat you because they can cancel your two infinite value generators.

I hope you liked the guide! If anyone has a suggestion or comment, feel free to send me a forum message, add me in-game, or talk on the game’s discord.