Not a whine thread.
Ok, Vet and Hai solo decks devastate him. Ok, Fault Vet, check.
Any other options? Tech choices? Anything Abyssian with a positive matchup?
What can I fcking do against three turns of Lavaslasher and Makantor next turn, oh my God…
Maybe dying wish stuff might work? Idk.
Vaath is usually annoying and lavaslasher is a bitch card.
Dispel decks I suppose, at least for the smash part.
And Provoke units?
Nightwatcher?
Vaath’s main advantages are his healing (Ragebinder, Earth Sphere, Saurian Finality) and his sweepers (Homeostatic Rebuke, Plasma Storm, Makantor Warbeast). These give him an edge against aggro and swarmy strategies (which are the most popular ways to play Abyssian, so I don’t wonder that you’re having issues with the matchup 
)
As you already observed, he struggles mightily against decks in which these cards aren’t as effective: decks which can OTK him from any life total (Fault)/decks that don’t have minions for him to remove (Artihai).
More broadly, you can beat Vaath by playing minions that his removal matches up against poorly, or decks that have an inevitable lategame and can stall long enough to get there.
Examples of these decks include: Titan (forcefield blanks a lot of his stuff), Arcanysts (typically Vaath doesn’t have much unconditional removal, and so Owlbeast can be a big issue for him), Dying Wish (he has a lot of trouble removing these cleanly), and Eggs (similarly, Rebirth is tricky for him to deal with). Well-piloted Destiny decks like Ox (with enough dispel), N.O.S.E., or Xor should also have decent matchups.
This means that Abyssian should have quite a few good options. Try Arcanysts, Dying Wish, or Xor.
Not sure about Xor (tried that to no success), Abyssian Arcanysts mostly die to plasmastorm (Knell helps though), but DW may work.
Am I wrong about Arcanysts? Do I miss something? The problem is no early tempo and vulnerability to plasma, is there a remedy?
Dying Wish abyss tends to wreck Vaath. Chakram is an abyss staple and is brutal on Vaath because it puts things out of plasma range and makes rebuke dangerous. Any deck can tech 4/5s, dispel, and similar to give him a real hard time.
Vaath is one of the easiest decks to tech against without hurting your other matchups and or just playing around their stuff goes along way. AKA do not over extend into a wipe. Diagonal placement to avoid frenzy. Not backing off early on, waiting till drogon lethals are a possibility to give up mid control that way you have time to back off later on. Always keep finality in mind so do not rely on things that are 8 plus mana in that matchup. Both in terms of tech and counterplay Vaath has some of the most.
Basically my entire IV thread was built to beat Vaath during the 3 mana rebuke/7 mana finality days and I absolutely stomped him because it was everywhere and easy to tech against. (Thread did get reworked a ton post nerf though.)
Kron by its self dodges magmars entire kit, two bodies the smaller one protecting Kron from nat select, 4/5 avoiding rebuke/slasher/kantor/lance/Plasma. Lightbender dispels the stun and atk buff on finality or just Vaath at any point and is also an excellent meta choice to dispel tiles/walls.
Dying wish in general is good vs magmar. Abyss has lots of options in that regard and or artifacts. Vet has Aymara/Mirage/Fault/Kha/Kanopic/Swarm King. In Vanar Luminous/MWisp are pretty hard on em while cloud caller and moose dodge all the removal. Lyonar has Titan, Afterblaze, Oaken Heart, Grandmaster, Argeon atk manipulation, Vitirol, and careful use of Aurora. Songhai has artifacts a plenty, Ox can tech a lot of neutral removal resistant bodies, and nonsense OTKs work although finality is hard on them.
More neutral options aside from Lightbender/Kron,: Redsteel Minos, Sell Soul, Dioltas, Owlbeast (Meaning arcanyst across the board), Blue Conjuerer, Dancing Blades. And those are just the good ones. Stuff like EMP and similar is not perfect as it eats it to rebuke but is still a great powerhouse that makes most decks better and dispels.
Thanks. I forgot of dispel, it helps, especially in Arcanyst.
Doesn’t help against Lavaslasher, though.
Slasher can be avoided with good positioning, and or good stats make it unappealing.
Good stats are rare in Arcanyst, that’s what I tend to.
Actually, the issue angered me during my attempt to make a working midrange Xor list we discussed in Miguel’s thread.
Arcanysts should certainly have a good matchup. Plasma Storm does kill some of your things (Illusions, Wraithlings, and Manaforger), but not Owlbeast unless he also has a Natural Selection to follow it up, which should let you rebuild pretty quick. Even if you suffer a total board wipe, Death Knell on the top end lets you come back with just one card. Having Furor Chakram also helps since it pumps nearly all your minions out of Plasma range and makes Rebuke a dicey proposition for him.
The main thing to keep in mind is the classic question you should ask yourself in every matchup, “Who’s the Beatdown?”. In this case, it’s Vaath: he’ll run out of resources way before you do, since you have card draw and he doesn’t, and you’re the one with inevitability in form of an army of minions with gigantic health pools. Since you should win in the lategame, what you need to prioritize is getting to the lategame: keep your general away from Vaath to prevent him from hitting your face, and play your minions defensively to maximize their chances of living and being allowed to snowball.
If you’re really having trouble, you can tech in some cards to make things even better. I don’t know if you’re running Blue Conjurer currently (I find him a little awkward in fully powered Arcanyst lists, with his ability often causing overdrawing with all the cheap spells), but his stats naturally dodge Vaath’s entire removal kit and he’ll allow you to rebuild even faster after a board wipe. You could even include Lightbender as a way to reset Overload stacks or save your bacon after a Finality.
What I have learned through years of experience is that, when you use Vaath against Vaath, the winner is usually Vaath.
what if you tech with summon sentinel?
is that 3+4(sentinel +lavacounter)? or does it transform first? if 2+4 it might be fine with a cass’s bbs.
what i used before was chakkram(the minion), since people didnt run rebuke then(and those that did, forgot to move away from frenzy so i wont anyways). idk if it’ll work now.
Thank you for your suggestions, guys! It seems I forgotten lots of things while not playing Dooli
Screaming of “trial sajj, trial Sajjjjjj!!!” in the distance
Very few abyssian cards can stand up to rebuke & plasma. Buffing them up with shaman+Maehv bbs works best for me.
My hybrid Xor deck has a slight positive winrate against smash vaath, because:
It’s not easy though. Games against vaath are always really scary.
You can beat him with Vanar but it isn’t easy.
Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way. As always, play around Makantor and Lavaslasher. So for example if you wanna put a Rex down, make sure you can move far away from it so they can’t Makantor you next turn. Or if they put metallurgist down first turn, play your stuff outside of Lavaslasher range.
Lavaslasher is only really scary when it gets to proc fight on turn two which can very clearly be played around, most other times it’s just a worse Brightmoss Golem and it shows if you play around it. You will feel the tempo loss as the game goes on.
If they play stuff that dies to rebuke, you play stuff that dies to rebuke.
If they play stuff that dies to plasma storm, you play stuff that dies to plasma storm. If you look at the deck I posted for example, if they have a bunch of metallurgist golems, and I have to choose between wisp or mentor, I’ll go with mentor. if they have a bunch of 4/4 lavaslashers and I have the choice between Kron and Letigress, I’ll go with Kron.
One really really good card is Sworn Avenger and it’s a devastating turn one play as the second player. If it survives early on, it becomes immune to natural selection and forces them to eventually waste Lavaslasher or Makantor on it mid game. In general Lavaslasher and Makantor HATE being spent on targets with high attack and Sworn Avenger is one of them.
You can also set up plays with Frostburn the same way they do with their board clears, because after all they have to be the aggressor. So if they have a bunch of little minions, move back and put value generators on board to encourage them to move forward giving you a big Frostburn.
If you’re getting to the lategame and you haven’t won yet, you gotta start preparing for finality and look for Lightbender. In general if I draw a Bender, I’m very conservative with it and I will only use it if I have to. You might not draw more than one throughout the course of the game and you will need it to counter finality.
Sometimes the Vaath player might be meming with Kraigon instead of Finality which is the proper way to play, so it pays well to also have Hailstone Prison and EMP in hand when at that stage.
Corner provokes with Kron are relatively easy to pull off in this match up because most of the time, Vaath doesn’t have many minions on the board around him. So for example if there’s a Lava Slasher 2 spaces in front of him, walk forward and put Kron in the bottom left corner and body block the slasher with your general and cover the other space adjacent to Kron and Vaath and your general with a cheap minion. Rex is perfect for the job for example because it doesn’t die to Vaath even if he has buffed his attack. If you are forcing him to punch the Kron with his face you’re getting value.
That’s all I got.
Here’s an example game that illustrates everything I talked about:
https://play.duelyst.com/replay?replayId=-LyJVWhF6WhyXWuAQJya
Played recently while I was rank 1
15 characters posted by mistake mods delete please
I see you are a man of culture aswell ^^
In swarm, soûl grim war is very helpful. Magmar has troubles with artifact.
But people should think carefully before crafting it,