Face is the place. It’s the first thing we see on our opponent’s field, and the last thing that we hit with that ever so sweet game-ending blow. Nobody can resist going for face – we are bound to do it sooner or later, whether it’s the love-taps of 1 damage Forest Bats, or a fully-evolved Albert hitting it not only once but (Gasp) TWICE.

Hi guys! meekopi here, and in this article, I’ll talk about my general mindset and thoughts going into tournament which led me to fielding a triple (if you count Daria Rune) aggro lineup.

Days before the tournament, I’ve experimented with different lineups. There were a lot of combinations, but they’ve always centered around these decks:

Daria Runecraft

Dimensional Shift Runecraft

PtP Forest

Aggro Forest

Control Bloodcraft

Aggro Bloodcraft

Aggro Swordcraft

Midrange Swordcraft

OTK Dragon

Aggro Shadowcraft

Without a team (or even testing partners), all I had to rely on was throwing each deck onto the wall known as Ranked play and see which ones stuck. The ones which stood out were these three because they made consistent win streaks:

Daria Runecraft

Aggro Bloodcraft (got up to 10!)

Aggro Swordcraft

Now that alone isn’t enough to make a snap-decision to play these decks. Tournament play differs from Ranked in that tech choices play a greater role, and a good read on the metagame goes a long way, not to mention that the skill level of the competitors are generally higher overall since everyone’s playing a lot more carefully.

I also had to consider the following things:

Burden of Execution

This bit of wisdom came from Derek “Dunktrain” Arabian, a pro player / caster of the game Heroes of the Storm. He states that if two teams of equal play skill clash using two different strategies that achieve the same result, the team that has an easier, less complex strategy is bound to win more times eventually because it can execute its strategy more consistently because it has less margin for error.

In Shadowverse, this concept applies directly to how consistent a deck is able to enact its game plan. If you’ve experimented with a fair number of decks, you’ll notice that some of them implode – either through player error (e.g. wrong sequence of plays), or by failing to draw the right cards (which is an inherent risk in the game).

This is why I usually prefer aggressive decks when given the chance. Their strategy is both simple and consistent – we can keep pressuring our opponent with Veteran Lancer just as well as with Fervid Soldier. Most of the time, it doesn’t matter which of them shows up in our hand, as long as we’re able to play one of them on turn 2 and start threatening our opponent.

They’re fundamentally easy to use as well – just attack the opponent when possible, or trade when appropriate. Clear blockers and other threats with removal. Count for lethal and plan ahead. Rinse and repeat.

Now imagine being on the other end of the table. If you’re playing control, you HAVE to answer all of these threats that they’re playing, and you have to have ENOUGH of them or risk being overrun. And then you have to worry about playing in a way that puts you out of lethal range, and then playing your cards in the correct sequence for maximum value. Add to this that some decks have their own complex intricacies, mechanics, and lines of play. It can all add up throughout the course of the tournament and cause a player to misplay.

Meanwhile the guy on the other end just keeps sending guys in.

Power Level of Aggressive Decks vs other Decks

The big question then, is that if these aggressive strategies are strong enough to power through the other existing decks. We can picture the typical aggressive deck as having a respectable, consistent level of power early in the game which drastically drops from turn 6 onward.

The task then, is to find which decks either:

a) exhibit a higher level of power in the early game than the typical aggro deck, or

b) maintain their consistency and level of power past the turns where the usual aggro deck experiences a falloff.

The great thing is that all three decks accomplish this.

Daria sacrifices a fast early game for explosive turns which floods the board with more followers than the opponent can normally handle on that turn, has enough reach through direct damage, and can outlast most decks by having more card draw (thus being able to play more threats than the opponent has answers to).

Aggro Blood on the other hand, has VERY good (arguably the best) early game pressure in Ambling Wraith (3+ damage to the opponent if unanswered), and Bloodfed Flowerbed (guaranteed 4 damage if the opponent doesn’t heal). It also has an INSANE amount of direct damage, which more than makes up for its lack of card draw.

Aggro Swordcraft on the other hand, is in an interesting spot. It almost didn’t make the cut because of Shadowcraft Aggro, which has a comparable early game and great reach (Phantom Howl, Cereberus). However, Swordcraft’s ability to quickly fill the board with Floral Fencer, and Alwida’s Command won me over. You HAVE to answer a full Swordcraft board or risk dying in a couple of turns. This makes them resilient to single-target removal, but very prone to board wipes.

And then there’s Albert, who can steal games you have no business of winning by providing unparalleled reach that can’t be found in the other crafts.

Position and Read in the Metagame

To be honest, my read on the metagame is a bit off. I was expecting lots of Daria Rune (correct), Control Blood (kinda correct), and Aggro Sword (wrong). I wasn’t expecting the popularity of Havencraft, but that’s what you get when you skimp on a bit more research like me. And I paid dearly for it by losing almost all my Havencraft matches.

That aside, all three of my decks were seemingly well-positioned: Daria Rune is decent against almost any matchup. The same can almost be said for Aggro Sword, save for its more abysmal win rate vs Havencraft decks. Aggro Blood performs well against most Runecraft variants, and can cheese out any deck that doesn’t have any form of healing in general.

In all honesty, I think some people underestimated good ‘ol aggro too much because a couple of nerfs happened, and the format seemed to have slowed down with the lack of a dominant aggro deck like OTK Roach. It probably didn’t help that Aggro Bloodcraft was demoted to Tier 3 in the list (and thus out of most players’ radars). In reality, the metagame might to have shifted just enough to allow an opening for it to wreak havoc.

Other Small Nuances

Daria Rune was an easy pick, but I had to make a couple of small observations before fully committing myself to the other two, and these are:

The Decline of Angelic Barrage

I came upon an interesting realization when I was testing out the decks in Ranked: I was more surprised when the opponent has Angelic Barrage than when they don’t. This allowed me to swarm the board most of the time without fear of being punished. People seemed to have favored the more powerful, costly effects (e.g. Bahamut, Revelation) to break open midrange or control mirror matches, which left Quickblader and the Bats free to do as they please.

“Packet” Healing (or packing none of it)

You might have noticed that outside of Havencraft, the usual healing done per turn only amounts to 2 health, and that the healing effects that can put a game out of reach come in very late in the game (e.g. Temptress Vampire), or conditional (e.g. Fairy Beast, Righteous Devil).

This means that short of an uncontested Unicorn Dancer, it’s still possible for aggressive decks to catch up on damage, since the usual direct damage spell does 3 damage, and they tend to have lots of it along with other forms of reach. This effect is felt more by other slower decks that didn’t include to any form of healing at all – aggressive decks can simply go all in on face even from a losing position and still win by putting their opponent within lethal damage range.

“I thought you were playing (insert an archetype here that isn’t aggro)!”

The great thing about these three Crafts is that the popular archetypes associated with them differ greatly from one another, so the opponent already has to take a risk in guessing what deck you’re playing. This can lead to mistaken mulligan decisions. For example, if they thought I was playing Control Blood, they might mulligan 1 less removal (which might make all the difference as I can put in a couple more points of damage from an unanswered follower), or worse, to a slower hand (out of fear of being out-valued by Dire Bond).

Another great example was ExG Gengur’s decision to play D-Shift Rune. In his interview, he said that the players who do not ban Runecraft usually has at least one deck in their lineup that hard-counters Daria Rune, and more often than not, that deck is bad against D-Shift.

Swordcraft also works the same way. While Midrange Sword and Control Sword are nearly identical, the fundamental difference of Aggro Sword from the other two is the amount of field presence it produces before the Floral Fencer-evolve turn. I’ve had games where the opponent is facing 2 Quickblader, 1 Pompous Princess, 1 Fencer, and 1 Fervid Soldier before their turn 4, and that’s already a lot of pressure that needs to be solved even before Floral Fencer (or Albert) arrives to reinforce my offense. So if my opponent misread my deck and expected light aggression until turn 4, then that makes all the difference in the game, as I can pile enough damage to set them up for lethal eventually.

Play Order

During the Swiss rounds, Daria Rune was banned most of the time, so I used Aggro Sword to test the waters. A deck that can be beaten by Aggro Sword can usually be beaten by Vania and friends as well, and it’s inevitable that they’ll be running into her sooner or later in the match.

On the other hand, if Aggro Sword loses, it’s simply a matter of guessing the opponent’s remaining deck and choosing which aggro deck will perform better against it (usually Bloodcraft) to keep you in the match. From there things become simpler as you both really don’t have a choice in game 3, so it’s all about playing your best possible game until good fortune takes over (or doesn’t) and gives you the win.

But really, when in doubt, send out Aggro Blood. 😉

One of the mistakes I’ve made was not banning Havencraft rather than Runecraft in my opponent’s lineup, as I was too scared of those unreasonable Daria turns. I later realized that I’d rather risk playing against a deck that occasionally get unfair wins against my lineup than against something that can consistently beat it.

Decklists

I’ve put off posting any decklists not because there’s some super-secret tech that I’ve included, but rather because they’re all fairly standard (save for overloading ALL of them with Demonic Strikes and Dance of Death). Here they are:

Blood Aggro: https://goo.gl/V6TlZD

Daria Tempo: https://goo.gl/eoh4LS (I think the list I used had -1 Demonic Strike -1 Dance of Death +2 Kaleidoscopic Glow)

Sword Aggro: https://goo.gl/0Rxq4Q

My Sword aggro admittedly, wasn’t the most optimal of lists. I think it won mostly out of opponents getting shocked at seeing things like Fervid Soldier or Pompous Princess in it lol. I’ve been trying to tweak it for a while and here’s what’s working for me a the moment.

Sword Aggro 2: https://goo.gl/xnR0N8

Closing Thoughts

So that’s it for my general approach for the tournament. I hope that I was able to impart some insights that might help you through your games. An accompanying article will (hopefully) be published in ExG’s upcoming website which tackles one of the decks that I’ve used in more detail (such as the reasons behind specific card choices).

As for the summary of my run, I ended up 8th in the Swiss portion at 6-2 (2-0, 2-0, 2-0, 1-2, 2-1, 2-1, 2-0, 0-2), then battled through the Winner’s Bracket 2-1, 2-0, 2-1, and lastly 3-2 in a nail-biting rematch against crowd-favorite ExG Gengur (whom I lost to in Swiss) to secure my spot at the Grand Finals with a twice-to-beat advantage.

Gengur and I then ran it back where he took the first set 3-1, but I managed to answer with a 3-1 of my own in the second set to win the whole event.

Total Wins / Losses: 26 – 13 (66.7% Win Rate – nowhere near a dominating run, but it got the job done lol)

I haven’t recorded the individual numbers per craft, but I think Aggro Blood had the most wins while Aggro Sword had the most losses.

So if I were to do it again, would I still run the same lineup? Probably not. Tempo Rune and Aggro Blood, sure, but I’ll probably change my third deck despite the results. I heard Storm Dragon is picking up steam lately, and I personally would love to see big damage numbers for a change.

But if you’re new to tournaments and want something that’s easy to pick up and play, give triple SMOrc a try! 😀

A very warm thank you to Excelsior Gaming for hosting such a great tournament series, and congratulations to everyone who made it to the Top 16. See you guys in July!

Until then!

meekopi has started channels on Twitch and Youtube, as well as an account on Twitter that you can follow/subscribe.