The full release of Verdant Conflict is just around the corner, with a full release to look forward to after the September 25 maintenance. While we eagerly wait for the big drop to happen, I’d like to go over several deck archetypes that may get a huge makeover quite soon

A little disclaimer: these decks are not only likely far from optimal, but are also not meant to be top tier competitive decks from the get-go. They will be built with the current metagame in mind though, as I don’t expect the best decks to instantly vanish from existence or anything like that.

Regardless, let’s have a look at what I cooked up so far. Feel free to grab the deck codes for yourselves by clicking the deck names or images.

Amataz Aggro Forest

With significantly more ways to buff Fairies and extend boards thanks to Blossom Spirit and Amataz, Fairy Blader, Aggro Forest more than likely got one of the largest boosts in power from this set out of all existing archetypes in Unlimited. While the already insane snowball potential of the deck got even more ridiculous, the weaknesses of the deck still remain unaddressed. Sustained draw power is nonexistent outside of Liza, Queen of the Forest, and the potential issue of opening with all Fairy makers and no buffers or vice-versa gets further amplified, leading the deck to still have the same consistency issues as before. Oh, and Kel, Holy Marksman and Ian, Dragon Buster are a thing. But as long as the deck draws a smooth curve and avoids any tempo-based midrange matchup, expect Aggro Forest to be a very scary presence to challenge all of tier 2 and below.

Ironwrought Fortress Midrange Sword

The core strategy of Ironwrought Fortress hasn’t and likely will never change, but Regal Wildcat provides a significant boost in win condition and snowball potential. Ideally, the plan is to play the Wildcat on the turn Blazing Lion Admiral is Invoked from your deck, leading to a minimum of 10 storm damage, with even more potential damage with Latham, Honorable Knight‘s leader effect if it’s active. The addition of Valse, Champion Deadeye also greatly improves the deck’s grind game against taller matchups like Elana Haven and Lishenna Portal. Elegance in Action is the most experimental part of the list, but something to keep in mind about it is that any Heavy Knights it gets to summon will get Storm off Latham‘s leader effect, making it a more aggressive version of Lux, Solar Lancer. Of course, many other MidSword variants can get plenty of mileage from these tools as well, but the Ironwrought version has the most synergy with the new cards among them.

DShift Riley Rune

Competitively speaking, I did previously mention that Riley Rune won’t be making huge waves in the metagame as long as Daria Rune continues to be the best and fastest Spellboost deck around. I still stand by that statement, but with the addition of multiple new 1-cost spells in Arcane Aether and Apex Elemental‘s Accelerate, Dimension Shift overall gets a potent boost in speed, allowing the deck to explore additional options to take advantage of extra turns. Letting an Invoked Riley, Hydroshaman attack multiple times is the newest way the deck can win by, and it brings some amount of promise because of the fact that the Natura package allows optimized access to those new 1-cost spells to begin with. Don’t forget that Kaleidoscopic Glow can bounce Naterran Great Trees just as well as Apex Elemental can, too. It will still likely take a revert of Dimension Shift‘s nerf from 18-cost to 20-cost to bring the deck back into viability, but for diehard fans of the deck, this concept should be a nice breath of fresh air.

Disdain Aggro Dragon

Dark Dragoon Forte is back at three copies, and the deck is now likely in its best state to return as the best combo deck check around. There’s not much to brew here compared to other lists on this article, but the addition of Neptune, Tidemistress gives the deck a set of Novice Troopers that was honestly kinda needed to bolster the deck’s early curve. The gameplan is the same as before. Just play your curve, hit your opponent’s face fast and hard, and use the Disdain package to draw more cards and clear annoying threats on the opponent’s field. It’s still very fun to pilot, and I think the whole Unlimited playerbase can agree with me that we are very happy that Artifact Portal’s hardest counter is now back in business. Hopefully this should give a number of other archetypes more room to breathe.

Natura Midrange Shadow

Unlimited’s most historically iconic tier 1 deck has returned, and can now finally state for itself that it is no longer Eachtar.dec. Multiple win conditions have entered the list thanks to the full unnerf of Gremory and the introduction of Thoth. Helio, Sacrosanct Spirit adds to the deck’s board stickiness thanks to his Last Words ability being able to dodge repeated Kel, Holy Marksman triggers and consecutive attacks from opposing followers. The delayed Zombie he summons is guaranteed fodder for Necroassassin, Demon Eater, and Soul Conversion. A tiny Natura package squeezes itself into the list with three copies of Revenant Ram and Lubella, Necrofamily each, providing the deck more ways to add to Thoth‘s Last Words count and swarming the field with endless amounts of followers. This does come at the cost of one board slot taken up by Naterran Great Tree though, so some care has to be taken to not go wider than your board allows. And not to mention that this is only one way for the deck to be built. Variants that include the other unnerfed cards Little Soulsquasher and Shadow Reaper are bound to appear as well. Hopes are overall very high for this deck and Shadowcraft overall to return to relevance.

Vengeance CaraCradle Blood

I might have gotten a little carried away with the brews at this point, but at the very least, this is a showcase of how flexible the Vengeance engine of Bloodcraft can be. Most of Vengeance Blood’s most important cards are still present here, but with an added bonus of a slow, but dangerous win condition. By merging the start-of-turn draw from Cradle of Dark Divinity with the end-of-turn stackable draw with Carabosse, Wicked Fairy, one can expect this deck to be able to deal a minimum of 5 or more damage to the opponent each turn. Doublame, Duke and Dame, Belphegor, and Unleash the Nightmare add to that hand size as well, ensuring that there will be plenty for Cradle to discard each turn. The only thing to make sure to not do is play Carabosse with only 6 total play points available. You will be locking yourself out of Cradle for the rest of the game if you do. It’s a slower, more grindy version of Vengeance Blood, but the added turn-by-turn damage factor against similarly slower decks should differentiate it as a new flavor of Control Blood.

City of Gold Storm Haven

This already obnoxious variant of City of Gold Haven not only got more Storm followers to have fun with, but also twice as much quick removal thanks to the new Priest of Excess. Since his Crystallize ability makes his amulet version be treated as a “playing” of an amulet instead of an amulet coming into play, City of Gold will reduce its Countdown no problem, upping the Heretical Inquiry count to six copies. Agnes, Hollow Feather and Featherfolk Punisher are also terrifying finishers and extenders for the deck, taking full advantage of the multiple low-Countdown amulets that populate this list. A known weakness of this deck is the potential to run out of Storm followers against more defensive matchups, but it’s safe to expect that weakness to be more or less resolved with this new list.

Lishenna Ragna Portal

It’s no surprise to anyone that Lishenna Portal got bullied quite a bit with the introduction of Angelic Smite to the card pool. Not everyone ran it, but it was a common enough presence that the poor idol girl gets denied her audience more often than it should. With the addition of Awakened Ragna, however, the deck finally gains something that it has sorely needed for the longest time: a backup win condition. While the card’s Enhance is incredibly slow for Unlimited standards, the healing that Destruction in White gives along with the multiple board wipes found in Magna Giant and Destructive Refrain should be enough for the deck to access that Enhance against most non-combo matchups. An added bonus of this list is that it is 100% Rotation legal, so perhaps Portal players can look to it as an option for Grand Prixs without too much investment.

Wrap Up

Like I said before, none of these lists I posted here are optimal by any means, but they should at least be able to put up a good fight against tier 2 decks and maybe 1 of the top tier matchups. The set won’t be out until past midnight PST, so I encourage everyone to stay patient and keep on theorycrafting until maintenance ends. And as always, thanks for reading.