This deck revolves around a few win conditions:

Cloudsnake saddle. This will put a 5-7 turn clock on the opponent. Beastcaller’s amulet. 6/5 worth of stats for 3 mana… pretty efficient. Recurring nightmare. It’s a little slow but good against control decks. This is plan B. Impending doom. This is plan C.

While this is not a tryhard deck, it is definitely competitive jank. You get to play weird cards like Cloudsnake Saddle, Beastcaller’s Amulet, Recurring Nightmare, and Unstable Form.

While I’ve written about this deck before, this deck is playable again in the current V1.18 metagame because decks have slowed down and there isn’t too much Combrei around.

Mulligan

Basically, you mulligan for an aggressive hand- a flying unit plus Cloudsnake Saddle or Beastcaller’s Amulet. A hand with a unit and a Whispering Wind is ok since the Whispering Wind can help find the combo pieces.

Recurring Nightmare + Rapid Shot is also a combo, but it is not a great plan.

Ultimately, this is a combo-centric aggro deck. It will typically be very hard to win without one of your combos. With 8 combo pieces, there is a reasonable chance that you naturally draw one even if they aren’t in your opening hand.

Deck list

4 Blood Beetle (Set1 #260)

1 Dark Return (Set1 #250)

4 Levitate (Set1 #190)

2 Permafrost (Set1 #193)

4 Rapid Shot (Set1 #259)

3 Sabotage (Set1 #252)

1 Suffocate (Set1 #251)

4 Twilight Raptor (Set1 #379)

1 Unstable Form (Set1 #189)

4 Annihilate (Set1 #269)

4 Argenport Instigator (Set1 #268)

4 Cloudsnake Saddle (Set1 #199)

1 Vara’s Favor (Set0 #35)

4 Whispering Wind (Set1 #202)

4 Beastcaller’s Amulet (Set1 #282)

1 Direwood Beastcaller (Set1 #271)

2 Recurring Nightmare (Set1 #382)

2 Impending Doom (Set1 #286)

5 Primal Sigil (Set1 #187)

7 Shadow Sigil (Set1 #249)

1 Cobalt Monument (Set1 #418)

4 Diplomatic Seal (Set1 #425)

4 Feln Banner (Set1 #417)

4 Seat of Cunning (Set0 #62)

Piloting the deck

The deck has interesting interactions and decisions to make.

As discussed in the section on mulligan, the deck revolves around hitting certain combos:

Evasive unit + either Cloudsnake Saddle or Beastcaller’s Amulet. Recurring Nightmare + Rapid Shot (or Cloudsnake Saddle). (*There used to be a time when Recurring Nightmare could singlehandedly beat some control decks.) Nightmare will come back to your hand with a bigger buff. Argenport Instigator’s ability will trigger Beastcaller’s Amulet if Instigator doesn’t die at the same time an opponent’s unit dies. That is an obscure interaction that many have forgotten about. Direwood Beastcaller + some way of getting it through.

You need to play towards assembling those combos. Sabotage is there to strip removal from opponents’ hand to protect your evasive units, which unfortunately there aren’t many of.

In most cases, you have to take risk. You may have to play like the opponent doesn’t have Marshal or Torch or Lightning Strike to disrupt your attempts at landing Beastcaller’s Amulet. You may have to commit everything to the board and forgo playing around sweepers. All-in aggression is often the correct line of play. Either you stomp your opponent or they stomp you.

Cloudsnake Saddle should usually be played before playing spells like Sabotage, as spells give opponents the opportunity to Torch your units.

Whispering Wind is a tricky toolbox card that requires you to know your deck. In general, do not play a fifth power so that you can ditch it to Whispering Wind. There are very few things that you need 5 power for. If you ditch a 3-power card, you will always get Impending Doom. (An alternate deck list plays only Deathstrike at 4 so that you can reliably fetch it.)

Unstable Form is to get rid of enemy fliers and to debuff enemy units. Or use it on your own units if evasion or a buff on a unit will give you the win that turn. Otherwise, you probably shouldn’t use it on your own units.

Influence-wise, you only need double Shadow and a single Primal.

Closing thoughts

This deck is for you if you want to play interesting games and beat people with obscure cards.