Latest Brew – Diamond Moon

by Wurtil

Initial tournament results of archetypes being played after the health changes have been what the playerbase expected. Champions like Kranok, Benvolio, and especially Tetzot who gained health during the change process became more popular ; Cressida, Urgnock, Zared Venomscorn and other champions who went down in health became less popular. What has been most interesting though, has been watching how existing archetypes take advantage of the change. With Tetzot especially being considered one of the largest winners in the process, many players paying attention to what that meant for deckbuilding were filling their decks with Burns and Vampiric Kiss es to keep Azurefate Sorceress from doing her thing.

In this new meta, while many of the same archetypes are being played, they are showing up in very different numbers these days. Major Ruby of Destructions were everywhere just a couple months ago, but now Arborean Rootfather s with the damage gem are being seen less and less. Azurefate’s have begun to be hated out of the top tables. In their places we are seeing a second rise of Mono Blood and a surge of Benvolio Burn decks. We have to think hard about what that means when looking at how our decks are constructed if we are going to keep winning.

Where do we want to be?

From the perspective of most aggressive decks, this isn’t a good place to be right now. In addition to a higher starting health, both Mono Blood and Benvolio Burn are excellent at stopping early game threats before dumping their own difficult to deal with troops. While I’m sure things will eventually come back around, for now players are shying away from the champions with sub-20 health. (The one exception is decks playing Quash Ridge Tusker as he is pretty adept at killing people whether they start at 16 or 26). So for now, let’s instead look at how our control decks need to adapt.

The big thing about control decks is figuring out what tools you need to bring to the fight. We have to understand what types of cards we are expecting to see the most of in order to actually do something meaningful about it. One way to go about this is to ask yourself what you are actually scared about from the troops you expect to see. As a general rule, I like to ask myself the following three questions:

Are you scared of the troop’s Attack, Defense, and combat keywords? Angel of Dawn, Quash Ridge Tusker, and Droo’s Colossal Walker are all great examples of cards we fear because they can dominate the attack phase. Removal, sweepers, and even just effectively positioned troops can be great answers. You typically have a lot of flexibility in dealing with these types of answers when it comes to deckbuilding, but in a match most of these troops are frightening enough presences that you will be punished accordingly for not being properly prepared.

Are you scared of the troop’s “Enter’s Play” abilities? Arborean Rootfather, Azurefate Sorceress, and Balthasar all come to mind as cards that can be frightening for their triggers when they first come down. Some forms of removal can be effective in these cases, but often instead you will be leaning upon interrupts and discard to ensure your opponent never gets a trigger in the first place. If you’ve ever Killed a Giant Corpse Fly (and we probably all have) you know how painful it feels knowing that your opponent got an advantage because you brought too much spot removal to the table.



Finally, are you scared of the troop’s special abilities? Cerulean Mirror Knight, Howling Brave, and Vampire King to an extent are all cards that can be tough to let live for even just a few turns as their abilities create a great deal of momentum in a game. Removal is typically the go-to answer here, with a preference to cheaper targeted removal as sweepers likely won’t hit more than one troop anyway. The difference between this section and the first is that you can’t just throw down a decent bodied troop of your own and expect the game to be stabilized, as woe be to the player that lets a Storm Cloud keep gaining charges.

Those rules in mind, what we are seeing in these early parts of the new metagame is a fairly substantial shift away from decks focusing on “Enters Play” abilities that must be accounted for and moving towards decks packing more troops with special abilities. Phenteo the Brood Priest and Psychotic Anarchist demand being answered from their respective decks almost immediately, unless you want to see how quickly a game can get out of hand. At the same time though, you have an opening to answer them while they are on the board in various ways, as opposed to a Rootfather that offers you the choice to transform him or take eight. What this means to us today is that the format might be more vulnerable currently to individual pieces of targeted removal than ever before, which lets us skew our control decks in some interesting ways:

Diamond Moon

CHAMPION: Winter Moon

Diamond offers an insanely deep pool of removal to choose from, and here we can take full advantage of that depth by pairing it with the Winter Moon draw engine and Sapphire’s deep well of filtering and card advantage. When you look at the framework, this deck isn’t really that different from the Wild Sapphire Winter Moon decks that have been doing well in the Constructed IQs recently. What we gain out of the switch from Wild focused to Diamond focused is primarily an enormous leap in resource efficiency and viable targeting. Before, we had to lean upon Cripple, Sapper’s Charge, and even Polymorph Dingler to take care of opposing troops, but now we can have Martyr, Repel, and Solitary Exile hit a wider range of targets for even less resources! The only thing we give up is that we take a hit in our ability to interact widely with actions and “Enters Play” troops, but as we stated above that is becoming less and less of an issue as this metagame continues to go forward.

I don’t think I can say enough about the card draw engine in this deck. Full playsets of Arcane Focus and Peek are nothing new to Winter Moon, but taking the next step and stacking your list with Oracle Songs and Zodiac Divination is what really gives the deck the extra edge. Epiphany is fine when you need to keep your shields up from turn 3 onward if you expect Rootfathers all day, but when you anticipate getting to your next Ready phase with the only change being that now you are staring down a fresh Vampire King then Oracle Song is the card to go to. Zodiac Divination especially hits above its typical weight class here, as the deck is so stacked top to bottom with 1 and 2 cost actions that you suddenly are creating some extremely cheap cards. Making Martyr go from cost 2 to cost 1 is way better than making whatever 4 cost troop you might be playing into a 3 cost troop, as you are less likely to lose the resource advantage you gain when you are playing lots of cheap cards in combination.

The choice of Winter Moon might seem strange to some coming from what otherwise would be a mostly Diamond Sapphire control deck, but the Winter Moon engine attached to the Sapphire card draw tools is too impressive to pass up here. It also is trivially easy to get your third shard when you plan to make the game go so long, and Shardcall being able to both help fix your shards and give you a potential late game trigger off Archmage Wrenlocke after it normally would be a dead card is a big bonus. Wild gives the deck its eventual win condition in Arborean Rootfather. Spellshield is a must starting out for control builds, but here we take advantage of Diamond’s ability to gain a huge health swing to give us a way to get out of tough situations that Benvolio Burn and various aggro decks can put you in.

Matchups

The deck is really looking to play against lots of Blood control and assorted midrange decks. Any deck that plans on dropping one troop a turn and end the game through the combat phase is going to find their plans hard to execute when we have such a plethora of cheap card draw and removal at our disposal. Extra Pride’s Falls might come in if fear Phenteo the Brood Priest coming to ruin your day, but otherwise most of the reserves can stay there. Wrenlocke might seem suspect when it might be the only target for your opponent’s removal, but leaving him in there both forces the Blood player to stay honest by keeping some of their removal in while also nodding to the fact that often he is a turn 6 or 7 play that accompanies another card with the plan of creating card advantage immediately anyway.

Opposing interrupt-based control decks are always interesting. If they don’t have Spellshield troops, your superior targeted removal likely will be enough to help you carry the game. If they do have Spellshield troops, then the game can become a very long and complicated chess match that would take a couple articles on its own to describe. Interrupts are often the key, but be ready to catch the opponent off guard with The Ancestors’ Chosen and Reese the Crustcrawler after reserves when they may not be able to deal with such a threat early.

Benvolio Burn deserves its own section these days due to how the deck has evolved from its roots. What started as a deck reliant upon Cerebral Fulmination to power out its actions has turned into an efficient damage dealing machine that tries to rain fire upon anyone bringing a low health champion to the table. The key is realizing that there are only a few methods of repeatable damage in the deck, so by prioritizing your ability to kill those cards quickly you can keep yourself in decent shape going into the late game. Solitary Exile especially can be important, as Mindpyre can’t be allowed to sit on the board for long at all. At that point, the Benvolio player starts to do math each turn on whether they can create a series of lethal actions, often requiring a Burn to the Ground or two to deal enough damage to win before you can effectively strike back. Countermagic or landing a Rootfather often can spoil that plan, so while there certainly are openings for the Benvolio player to take down your health quickly the Winter Moon deck is equipped to deal with it. Verdict of the Ancient Kings is especially strong here, and Mentor of the Wind can be a fine card to bring in on the play where you can stifle their entire ground game almost immediately.

Traditional Cressida Ramp and Tetzot still aren’t terrible matchups by any means, but you do need to be prepared to deal with their problem cards. For Cressida, you often have the tools to keep Periwinkle from being a real issue, but Eye of Creation and Balthasar can ruin your day if you let them, so the extra Countermagic is helpful to bring in alongside the backbreaking Mass Polymorph Dingler. Tetzot can be a bit tougher due to their interrupts, but at their core a Tetzot deck is still trying to deal a large chunk of its damage through the attack phase once you take care of Azurefate Sorceress, so most of the deck is still quite good here.

Where this deck really falls short is against opposing aggro decks. Bryson Maplewood aggro, Tusker Rush, or even just and old school Dwarf Robots can be huge problems for the deck, primarily because Diamond/Sapphire lacks a great sweeper to keep those decks at bay. You are normally fine using a Repel on a Quash Ridge Tusker, but when the player with the Ruby Shards is playing one cost troops and you are playing two cost removal without any sizeable bodies in your list to stabilize the board you can find yourself run over without a prayer all too often. Mentor of the Wind is an all-star here, as against most of those decks he has the stats to threaten trading with something and then giving you a big health boost down the road. I’ve played Determined Zombie before in Constructed when I’ve needed a 1/3, so don’t look down on the Diamond Mentor just because she makes a 17th pick card after she’s done.

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