Dear Justin,

Auroran Sentry looks like a nice inclusion in Willpower control decks, but I don’t see it anywhere. I’ve used it, since I happen to have it, with some success. Is it justly overlooked, or unjustly neglected?

-Kleshumara

Dear Klesh Atronach,

Auroran Sentry can absolutely be the best card in the game in certain circumstances. That life gain can help a control deck claw back into a comfortable position as it wins the late game. I think that the reason we don’t see more of it has to do more with the cards you would run in that spot in a similar control deck that immediately impact the board – Mantikora & Miraak specifically, for just Willpower decks. Even Knight of the Hour provides that immediate life gain that could save you from a top decked Lightning Bolt, while Auroran Sentry won’t, even though it’s capable for a lot more long term value.

Auroran Sentry would probably be best in a deck that capitalized on the recurring life gain that it offers, but at this point I don’t think that there are enough payoff cards for that strategy to warrant running it over more instant-impact cards. Perhaps after we get a few more Monk cards that care about gaining life, that could change.

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Dear Justin,

What are your opinions on deck building? I am an old-school MTG player and really enjoy TCGs. I am trying to formulate my own strategies and build my own decks, but with all the resources at our disposal with the internet, it’d be really easy for me to just go online and copy someone else’s “Legendary” deck.

Do you believe players should strive to create their own decks rather than just copy others? Do you feel that a deck is not the only key to being successful in Legends….in other words, the player must know how to use a certain type of deck as well?

-Timothy

Dear Tim,

The best way to find a satisfying answer to this question to examine what you specifically want to get out of your experience. I come from a Magic background myself, where I was the kind of person who took pride in playing decks that I had created myself. Winning with some jank 4-color deck full of meta answers really spoke to me, and I didn’t mind the endless losses that came while refining that type of deck.

On the other hand, I also come from a background where I played a lot of poker – more than I played Magic, certainly – and in Poker, the idea is generally that you want to play the best cards in order to win. There’s a lot less flexibility in terms of creativity in that game, because no matter how suave my bluff is, going all in with 2-7 off-suit isn’t likely to win, no matter how good of a player I actually am.

I bring up Poker because Elder Scrolls Legends is, in a way, very forgiving to those who like to forge their own deck destiny because almost all of the cards are constructed playable. Consider new Hearthstone (or Magic) expansions, for example – most of those cards are unplayable chaff, often not even interesting in Limited. Legends doesn’t suffer from this nearly as much as most other card games do. The power in the game is very evenly spread through colors and cards.

I think that there are also a lot of reasons why a person might not want to create their own decks, which is perfectly respectable. A player without a lot of time on their hands might not be able to commit the necessary resources to design and test a new deck very often, but as a CCG fan, they want to play – so they look up Between the Lanes or legends-decks or one of my YouTube videos and see what other people are doing. That makes sense to me, and I can appreciate that this game isn’t the time commitment for everyone that it is for me.

Personally, I’ll always play my own creations, but that might ultimately be a bit of a personality defect on my part – I certainly am not responsible for all the best decks, and my stubbornness might cost me a game in Gauntlet mode or elsewhere.

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