**Whispering** Hey there. How’s it going?

I recently recorded another S-Rank game play piece—if you’re bent on watching it now, it’s embedded below. In it, you’ll hear me talk about a Cassyva list submitted during one of my streams by a viewer named Swordela (whose Duelyst IGN is OprahWindfury).

Or perhaps you won’t hear. I recorded the video late at night and was trying to keep quiet, a decision which in its infinite wisdom translated to a very muted video experienced. I tried to boost the audio with Audacity and I think the video is salvageable, but who knows. Anywho, if you can’t hear, lucky you: I had planned on writing up a little review of this list and now I’ve got even more reason to do so!

I’m just here for the decklist



Once again, apologies about the orientation of the decklist. Nothing I can do about that until DuelystDB gets updated, Manaspring creates a landscape layout or Counterplay Games decides to create an exportable decklist function.

Sidenote: KeithPls. Why no option to download decklists from the Duelyst client? It would make life so much easier for sharing lists. I know as a streamer, it would love to have an easily updatable decklist on screen, especially because I’m constantly changing lists. This holds particularly true in instances like this where there’s no third-party option for what the masses (i.e., me) clearly want.

End rant. Here’s the link to the list for those that need it.

We don’t take too kindly to 5-drops around these parts

My first reaction to the decklist was “That’s way too many Rite of the Undervaults and Dark Transformations!” These two cards have always felt very situational to me, and for that reason I’ve always been rather hesitant to run them at all, let alone 3 of each.

Case in point: you really only want to draw Rite late game when you’re at full mana, almost no cards, and relatively safe from harm. At any other point in time, you’re either losing value or losing tempo.

Dark Transformation too can be rather awkward, although I wonder if that’s the product of bias. I used to run it in most if not all of my budget Abyssian decks. As a result, it’s always felt rather… “beneath me” in terms of deck building. Yeah, it’s an unconditional piece of removal that often VERY conveniently deals with some threats, but there are other ways to clear creatures that aren’t quite so clunky. Five mana is a lot, especially when you’re using it to clear a four-mana-or-less threat.

After playing with this deck for a while both on stream and off, my opinion on these cards have done an incomplete 270. I went from

“These cards are always really awkward and clunky. Why are you running 3 of each?” to

“Wow! These cards are so underappreciated! We should all be running 3 of each!” to

“I’m not sure where these cards land right this second, but they’re both probably playable in the right deck.”

I routinely found myself stumbling upon a Rite late game and just reloading on cards to either solidify my advantage or claw my way back into the game. With so many 1-drop spells, it’s easy to not only maximize the effectiveness of the spell, but Rite-ing also felt like less of a gamble as every leftover mana was a potential post-draw spell I could immediately use.

Dark Transformation too surpassed my expectations many times. Nice try Reaper of the Nine Moons/Lantern Fox/Nimbus/whatever. There’s just so many minions that yield absurd value if dealt with traditionally, value which DT shuts down. Placement-ignoring dispel + removal? Seems good.

By the end of my run, I was less high on each. Five mana is a lot, and when you’re using these cards at inopportune times or on not-really-that-threatening targets, you’re hemorrhaging card quality on stuff you might otherwise be running.

Hits and Misses

One card I definitely didn’t miss was Shadow Nova. The current incarnation of Nova is rather lackluster, but I’ve been looking at it as sort of an enabler of sorts; not strong per se, but boosting the effectiveness of all your other spells. It made cards like Ghost Azalea quite potent, but it demanded that I “invest” in a 4 mana mediocre play at some point earlier in the game. I’ll note here that even without Shadow Novae, Abyssal Juggernaut was still a powerhouse almost every time it came down although it didn’t quite have that “oh shit!” feel that it does with Nova in the list. Obliterate also was often still an “I win” card, although noticeably it decidedly didn’t win a match on my video below even when it cleared my opponent’s board.

I do wish there was something to do to progress my own board in the early game. My biggest critique of the deck was that it felt very reactionary. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; if our opponent is doing stuff and we’re parrying his blows effectively, we’ll often win. There were times though when we didn’t need to address an opponent’s threat early on. In those cases, it felt like I couldn’t really do anything effectively. Sitting at 5-mana with only plays like Rite, Dark Transformation (against an empty board), Ephemeral Shroud and Void Pulse feels miserable. We should be seizing tempo!

I’m not quite sure what should go in to address this concern. It honestly feels like the deck wants a body to drop on 3 or 4 mana, but none of the usual go-tos that I use (e.g. Sojourner) feel worth it. I could get on board with Dioltas, but I’m worried we’d be running too many 4-drops at that point especially since we’re literally running no 3-drops. I think ideally we’d want one that can preemptively address future beefy minions from an opponent and which costs 3 mana. Soboro? Take that Inquisitor Kron!

One card that I’d love to see in the deck is Grasp of Agony. It’s a 1-mana spell which compliments the 3-Rite game plan, and it’s incredible for board control, especially in conjunction with Daemonic Lure. That doesn’t really address the point above though—it’s another reactive card—but I’ve seen it single-handedly decimate opposing forces before and I think I’d like to run a couple if possible.

It also felt weird to only run a single Klaxon. I’d like to fit in a second if I could, if only to make our Obliterates more potent/lethal.

I keep talking about these cards I want to add but I’m honestly not sure what I’d want to cut to make room for them. We need to maintain a critical mass of 1-drops to make sure our Rites are powerful and the top end spells are thin enough as it is. I could see shaving off an Obliterate, Void Pulse and/or Dark Transformation depending what we want to play.

How’d it run?

Overall I was pleasantly surprised about how well the deck ran. We had a winning record on stream when I jammed it and [SPOILER ALERT] had a winning record in our recorded games as well.

It feels like I’ve gone over my likes and dislikes above. Overall I think the deck has power, but probably needs a little fine tuning, particularly with adding some “oomph” to the mid game.

Video

Here’s a video of my exploits. THE AUDIO QUALITY IS BAD AND I FEEL BAD. Now no one has to mention that!

Warp up

That’s it for this week. Feel free to drop me a line in the comments about thoughts on this deck, or send me a message about what you’d like to see in the future.

Thanks for reading

ZoochZ