You, dear reader, are here for the spoiler card, so let’s not make you wait!

Yep, that’s right - it’s a 3/4 for 4 resources with no Deploy or Deathcry ability. Rhythmic Spiritualist is a 3/4 for 3 resources, with additional upside, that doesn’t even see constructed play. But I honestly believe that Day Rider could be a key element in a potentially Tier 1 deck.

Why?

Imagine that you only play against decks that don’t run troop removal, and that your deck has Bloodspinner Zorath as champion and a bunch of Constants that are just good cards in the deck. Day Rider suddenly looks a lot better, doesn’t it? It can stick around, protect your constants, and gradually take over the game as it builds a growing army of Vespers. I think a correctly built Blood/Diamond Control deck will be able to engineer that scenario much of the time.

How?

With the help of a few other Frostheart cards, we can craft a potent control deck that runs no troops at all in the main deck. What will most of our opponents do after suffering through a game one where all their removal was useless and they lost to our powerful constants? Take out their removal in reserves, and bring in hate cards for constants. This is just what we, and our Day Rider accomplices, are waiting for. We bring in 4 copies of Day Rider now that we don’t have to worry much about them being removed, and they slowly take over while at the same time protecting all of our constants! If we can make a big chunk of our opponent’s deck useless in both game one and game two, we’re well on our way to victory. If the match does go to game three, they’ll have a difficult time guessing how to reserve.

Here is a rough draft of a deck list:

6 Cost

2x From the Ashes

2x Frostlock

4 Cost

4x Massacre

4x Twilight Eclipse

3 Cost

4x Blood’s Favor

4x Herofall

2 Cost

4x Decree of Banishing

2x Strangle

3x Rotcast

2x Xentoth’s Malice

1 Cost

4x Guidance

Shards

4x Well of Retribution

4x Shard of Retribution

4x Wakuna Coins

9x Blood Shard

4x Diamond Shard

Reserves

4x Day Rider



11 various cards to answer whatever we’re most worried about. A few options to keep in mind are Gemborn Prowler, Righteous Heir, Blinding Ire, Silent Sentinel, Eldurathan’s Glory, and Blight Knight.

One important thing to keep in mind is that Day Rider is much better turn 5 play in this deck rather than turn 4, because we can make a Dread Banner with our charge power on the same turn that we play our troop, which greatly improves our odds of getting at least one Vesper. This list really seems to have close to everything a control deck wants: Efficient sweepers, card draw, card filtering, efficient and versatile troop removal, incidental life gain, and win conditions that are difficult for most decks to interact with, particularly in game one.

Twilight Eclipse may seem like a slow way to win, but bear in mind that it counts itself for the first constant and our blood banner for the second, and we’re playing 12 constants in the main deck. It will be very common for it to drain our opponent of 3 health each turn. Twilight Eclipse also gets better in multiples. With 2 Twilight Eclipse, a Blood Banner, and a Decree of Banishing in play, for instance, we’ll be draining our opponent of 8 health a turn. Between Blood’s Favor, the Xentoth’s Malice + Blood Banner combo, Wakuna Coins, and Guidance, we will have great tools to dig through our deck for whatever we might need. All of that card draw and card selection also grants us the subtle advantage of making our reserve cards easier to find (and thus more powerful). This deck looks very promising to me, and I can’t wait to test it. Hopefully it will get the brewer’s gears turning in all of your minds as well!