Need help choosing a faction and working within a budget? I am here to help.
Choosing your faction comes down to play-style and theme preference. Each faction has their own flavor and leans towards either control, aggro, midrange, or combos. While most factions can play all of those basic archetypes the faction as a whole or the individual general tend to be geared more towards one.
My summary of factions.
Abyssian: The necromancers: They summon hordes of wraithlings and love when they die with their factions signature death watch mechanic, they can be used to swarm the field or they can be sacrificed for power for either controlling the board or getting out powerful late game minions. Alternatively you have creep which controls the board by spreading damaging tiles and has big finisher cards. They are a versatile faction with many deck types.
Magmar: The big, fast, hard to kill dinosaurs: Lots of control spells, the most access to rush and frenzy, they have the egg mechanic which can make some some stuff hard to kill, and the ability to ramp out big things fast. They are a very melee oriented faction with a lot of powerful staples.
Vetruvian: The Egyptian Machines: Think necrons. The factions signature is either strong midrange value generators and or Oblysks which are immobile structures that summon dervishes, a unit that has a lot of synergy in the faction, they also have blast which is a neat take for a ranged+aoe unit.
Vanar: The Frost Mages: They are known for powerful control, ramp, and board manipulation. Their signature mechanics revolve around which side of the board things are on, they have a faction unique tribe called Vespyrs which have some synergy with each other, and a unique unit summoned by effects called walls, which are immobile and dispelable but have a lot of utility and can be built around.
Lyonar: The archetypal holy Paladins with a lion sub-theme: A tanky defensive faction that revolves around provoke, high health, healing, and their signature kill Divine Bond. Strong but predictable. They are very close range formation focused with a host of things that effect units based on being around the general.
Songhai: The fire ninjas: Would you rather play a magic the gathering Red burn deck instead of duelyst? Then Songhai is the faction for you. They love to ignore the board with teleports, ranged, and high out of hand burst/burn damage. Very strong but a lot of solitaire.
General Tips:
Starting off the first orb you should buy is a Mythron orb as it comes with a free Mythic rare, you also get one after every ten Mythron orbs, but you should mostly invest in the Core Set orbs as they give the best value due to having a higher drop rate then the others and have a lot of staple cards. The other orbs should largely be ignored unless the majority of the deck your building comes from one particular orb. You can filter by expansion and other things with the little gear icon if your not sure where something comes from. If there is a particular Myhron Trial card you want it is worth it to continue buying Mythron Orbs until you get it. (After 61 Mythron orbs you will have all seven of the mythics.)
And on a final note about the latest Expansion, Mythron Wanderer is one of the Mythic Rare trial cards. It is generaly considered the best deck in the game and can be played by pretty much any faction. If you get your hands on it, and or you really want to just craft it rather then waiting to pull one from the myhtron orbs (if you do craft it you will eventually be refunded in the form a prismatic version that can be disenchanted after you buy enough orbs.), it can be very good for a new player because it is easy to just toss a bunch of whatever you have laying around as long as it curves out properly and have a solid deck. I wont be including any examples of wanderer as I loath the card, and its a bit of an investment to acquire it.
Unless you have a lot of experience with drafting decks gauntlet should be avoided when your first starting out as its a bit of a gamble. If your good at drafting and or after you have got the games fundamentals down it can be a great place to acquire resources and play on a level playing field, although personally I am not a fan of it.
There are a few extra ways to get free stuff early on like the various hidden achievements:
https://duelyst.gamepedia.com/Achievements or you can pick up free orbs and maybe learn a few things from watching twitch streamers.
If your not quite sure what direction you want to go in you can alternatively invest in Mechs or Arcanysts which can be played by just about any faction and are quite affordable.
In order to get the legendary Sisters you simply need to craft any full set (3x) of six rares(blue) from your faction of choice and then you get them free.
Another useful resource is T2k5’s various game enhancing scripts, they are all perfectly legal to use and have a lot of nifty little things that makes the client and gameplay a little nicer. They can be found here: https://duelyststats.info/scripts/scriptlist.html
How to build a deck
A quick checklist I tend to go through when building a deck is: Decide archetype, decide win condition, add support, add staples, check curve, balance card advantage needs, balance threats vs answers, add tech, figure out your bad match ups, tech for those. Test, Repeat.
There are a couple basic tricks, obviously deck type, card advantage, and gameplan change these but here are some of the rules:
For the most part you should run three copies of each card as consistency is key, running two x of a card is for situational tech, and running one copy is for a rarely used lategame bomb. You need to balance your curve to card advantage ratio making sure you have an early, mid, and late game, and or are hyper focused onto one of those aspects.
Typically you want 9 player one turn one plays, and usually ones that can contest globes. The exception to this is for slower decks that like to skip card advantage, but in general you want between 6-12 opening plays ideally two drop minions that can contest globes, and sometimes a couple three drops if you have a good one available, the bulk of a deck is usually around the four mana point, plus some late game stuff.
So you need to choose the weight of your curve either being low with a quick gameplan, ultra low with good card advantage, on curve so you can just play one or two things a turn and not need advantage, or a slower deck that has a little of both. (The mana curve refers to the average cost of your deck and the “curve” it shows on the graph above your deck building screen.)
Next you need to have a general idea of how many turns it takes your deck to win under normal circumstances and you need to build with sort of the goal of having a couple cards in your hand on the turn you should be winning. This way you have a play and a replace. So you just sort of have to eyeball how many cards each turn your deck is going to play/generate.
Draw is never mandatory but is an option, whats important is that you have balanced your curve to card advantage ratio, there are other ways to generate card advantage, or make it irrelevant. Desolator is a perfect card advantage generator being the only thing you need in your hand, and stuff like fault/variax make card advantage unneeded since your hand barely matters once those hit. And if you build an on curve deck that never plays more then one or two things a turn then card advantage wont be needed at all. A small philosophy I follow is “Anything more then two cards in hand on the final turn of the game is usually wasted tempo” So the trick to finding a balanced curve is keeping an eye on things and making sure you have a play and a replace on the final turn, if your hand is super full towards the end your curve is probably to high, if your hitting top deck mode to often your curve is probably to low.
An on curve deck looks something like 9 two drops, 3 three drops, 6 four drops, 6 five drops, 3 six drops, and a couple late game bombs. Then from there you have removal, tech, and usually something to generate card advantage like some cycles, none of which really count towards the curve since their mana cost is sort of irrelevant just being cards you play at the opportune time and even if they are just a two cost card like punish they are just fine to be the only thing you play in a turn.
Another thing that takes a lot of practice is resource management, it is perfectly ok to not spend all your mana each turn, and even occasionally skip turns if your playing a deck with low card advantage. This is a tough skill to learn, but a valuable one because time spent drawing cards is lost tempo, and spending removal on a low priority threat that you could just trade with is a waste. This does of course depend on the deck your playing, many decks prefer to try and really use as much mana as they can each turn, as wasted mana can also be wasted tempo.
Updated Vod for the lists played at the start of the season.
These are not the cheapest of budget decks as the only restriction I put on my self when making them was no epics/legends, my goal here is to provide some affordable lists that you can put together in just a couple days and feel pretty competitive. I am mostly going to give a short description and some upgrade advice here, for detailed info and complete deck examples check out my DeathsAdvocate's Master Thread: Eternal Trials of Mythron
Swarm
https://www.bagoum.com/deckbuilder#MTozMDEsMzoxOTA1MiwzOjMzMSwzOjIwMjcyLDM6MTEwODgsMzoyMDA0OSwzOjMxNywzOjExMTI2LDM6MjAwNzEsMzoyMDA1NywzOjIwMDcyLDM6MzEwLDM6MzAwMzksMzozMTg=
Summary
Swarm and Death watch is a lot of fun, its a classic archtype, swarm the field and then cache in your minions to fuel various death watch effects. Be careful not to overextend into a field wipe and dont be to greedy. It can be hard on a new player having to position a ton of units and dealing with AOE but if its your thing this a great place to start.
If you plan on sticking to the swarm route the first big card you should craft is Soul Grimwar, but if your not sure if swarm is your thing then the most important Abyssian craft is Desolator as it will go in pretty much every deck you make. From there it depends on what route you want to go.
Midrange Golem Vaath
http://www.bagoum.com/deckbuilder#MTo0MDEsMzoxMTA5OCwzOjExMDg4LDM6MjAxMTMsMzoxOTAzOCwzOjIwMTI1LDM6NDMyLDM6MjAxMTcsMzo0MDcsMzoxMDAxMiwzOjIwMjE4LDM6MTEwOTIsMzoxMDk1OSwzOjIwMTIy
Summary
A great deck for a new player as its easy to pick up. This deck sports a host of powerful control spells and sticky minions. The deck also features the golem tribe. Celebrant and Metalurgist both give you the ability to drop a five mana golem on turn two, and Celebrant can be used to ramp other things as well. Bond is a special keyword on a couple of our golems that only works if you already have a golem on the field when you play the unit.
The units with rush are perfect targets for diretide frenzy and thumping wave, thumping can also be used as removal in a pinch. And you of course also have Vaaths ability to just smash things.
The first expensive card you want to craft for the deck is Lavaslasher as its its powerful golem that is a staple in nearly all magmar decks, even the ones that do not run any other golems, its basicly a better version of Dancing Blades. Speaking of dancing blades remember your general and all your units always face the opposite direction from where you started which is important for blades effect, allthough once you replace it with Lavaslasher you no longer need to worry about that aspect.
After that you should craft Makantor Warbeast and Homeostatic Rebuke as they also go in almost every Magmar deck. From there it depends on the direction you want to go but Saurian Finality is the best general purpose legend that comes to mind, and if you stick to Vaath Drogon is his favorite legend.
Combo Golem Rag
http://www.bagoum.com/deckbuilder#MTo0NDksMzoyMDExNiwzOjIwMjAzLDM6MTEwOTgsMzoxMTA4OCwzOjIwMTEzLDM6MjAzMTIsMzoxOTAzOCwzOjExMDM5LDM6NDMyLDM6MjAxNTcsMzoyMDIxOCwzOjExMDkyLDM6MTEwOTM=
Summary
While the most expensive deck here it is a real monster that needs little to improve how powerful it is. Its primary goal is to OTK the opponent with Abjucator+Eggmorph+Thumping+Fortitude+BBS= A seven mana 20 damage out of hand burst.
You use Abjucator to discount Eggmorph, Thumping Wave, and Fortitude at some point in the game when the cards are in hand so the 3 spells cost 6 mana total, or if the game runs late you don’t need them all discounted as you should have enough mana. Then on a turn with 7 mana or more, you use Ragnora’s BBS to place the egg which is a 3/1 with celerity when hatched. You use Egg Morph to hatch the egg and when an egg is hatched it has a pseudo like rush mechanic meaning the minion can move that same turn. You buff it with Thumping Wave giving it +5 attack with Fortitude to give it +2/2. Making it a 10/3 minion with Celerity, allowing you to move and attack the enemy general twice to deal 20 damage.
When your not killing your opponent with crazy combos, ripper eggs are still a big threat on their own if left alone, and should they survive they are extra mean with Diretide frenzy or the aforementioned Fortitude. And you still have the powerful magmar golem package that I talked about in the Vaath deck, and here Boulder Breachers effect lets rippers get two attacks off even without a buff. We are also including the notorious EMP golem as it is much less counterproductive with Ragnora then it is Vaath.
Again the first expensive things you want to craft are Lavaslasher, Makantor Warbeast, and Homeostatic Rebuke as they go in almost every Magmar deck. From there it depends on the direction you want to go. You can pretty much be done there or you can go the Saurian Finality route, or if you are sticking with Ragnora, Zoetic Charm is a high priority craft.
Obelysk
Summary
Obelysks are tough to get used to for a new player but even if piloted poorly the deck is very powerful and packs a lot of value, once you get used to how Obelysks work its a very fun and powerful deck. Oblysks spawn a 2/2 dervish unit with rush randomly around them at the start of each turn that disappears at the end of the turn so positioning the oblysks safely enough to not die but close enough to generate value is key. Its a very aggressive value generating deck that can just put out constant pressure while maintaining its hand at the same time.
Another interesting card in the deck is Accumulonimbus which sports the Intensify Keyword. How intensify works is it adds the effect an extra time for each time the card was cast. The first nimbus you cast will summon two dervishes, the second four, and the last six. It can be a win condition all on its own and is usually worth digging for and saving multiple copies as the game goes on.
Their are a lot of different upgrade directions you can go with Vet but Cataclysmic Fault and Khanuum-ka are the backbones of most of the top tier Vet decks. Some other good general purpose expensive cards are Aymara Healer and Rasha’s Curse. Curse is particularly good with dervish focused decks like Oblysks. Alternatively you can focus more on the aggressive side of things and pick up Spell Jammer the go to draw engine for most aggressive decks.
Midrange Overdrive Faie
Summary
A strong midrange deck with some cool tricks. Make sure you try to keep your opponent on their side of the field so that you can abuse Wailing Overdrive should the opportunity present its self. Overdrive can also be abused with Hearthsister or Freeblades effect, and since both Freeblade and Basilysk are sentinels they are great for mindgames.
Meltwater Moose is a strong vespyr that is extra nasty when you dispel his drawback stun with either EMP or Lightbender who will also hopefully dispel something worthwhile of your opponents, and because Moose is a vespyr it turns Cryogenesis into a proper card advantage tool and a way to tutor out Moose.
The first thing you should craft is Malicious Wisp as its a real powerhouse of a card that goes in pretty much every single Vanar deck, after that it depends on the direction you want to go of which you have quite a few options, but if you are sticking with Faie then Bloodbound Mentor goes in most of her lists and just happens to be a strong neutral in general.
Bond
http://www.bagoum.com/deckbuilder#MToxLDM6MjAzNjEsMzoyMSwzOjEwOTgxLDM6MjcsMzo5LDM6MjAxODgsMzoyMDA2OCwzOjExLDM6MTAwMTIsMzozOSwzOjExMTMzLDM6MTcsMzoxMTA5Mw==
Summary
A very strong, cheap, and easy to play deck. Great for beginers. It has a simple goal of get something with a lot of health to stick, then cast divine bond on it for the win. You also have a little bit of synergy with Zeal thanks to Afterblaze, but it does not have to be used on a zeal minion to be a good card and can even further supplement a bond target. Healing can either be used on your self or on things you want to use divine bond on. Lifestream in particular is extra rude on your fat ten health units, but can be used as just a cycle in a pinch on smaller useful units.
Azurite Lion is a surprisingly good buff target, while you wont often bond him his celerity can really do a ton of work should the right situation present its self. That being said the deck already has enough ways to win as it is, so if you find your self struggling with aggro or something else he is a good flex slot with healing like Sunrise cleric or something else you need.
As for what to craft next you have a big decision to make between staple spells or crafting Alabaster Titan. If you choose spells and your sticking to bond then Aegis Barrier is the biggest upgrade for this deck. If your not sure if bond is your thing but still favor spells then Holy Immolation is next followed by Trinity Oath and or Sunstrike. Some other useful general purpose legends are Arclyte Regalia and Aperion’s Claim.
Songhai
Midrange Kal
http://www.bagoum.com/deckbuilder#MToxMDEsMzoyMDMyMywzOjIwMjc1LDM6MjAwODYsMzoxMjksMzoyMDE2OCwzOjExNSwzOjExMCwzOjEwMDEzLDM6MjAxMDIsMzoxOTA0OSwzOjIwMzE0LDM6MTM4LDE6MTMzLDI6MTEwOTM=
Goodstuff Reva
http://www.bagoum.com/deckbuilder#MToxMjMsMzoyMDI3NSwzOjIwMDg2LDM6MjAxNjgsMzozMDAxMCwzOjExNSwzOjExMDg4LDM6MTAwMTMsMzoxMjgsMzoyMDEwMiwzOjE0NCwzOjIwMzE0LDI6MjAwODIsMzoxMTYsMToxMzM=
Songhai is the faction I have the least experience with and I am not a big fan of many of their archetypes, so do take my advice here with a grain of salt.
Scroll Bandit is a staple in just about every minion based songhai list, and Juxoposition is one of the factions best cards. Battle Pando and Onyx Bear Seal are some other great general purpose epics you can make. But beyond that your upgrade route really depends on what you want to build.
I of course must request that you do NOT make an 8 Gates or Mantra deck as not only are they difficult to master, but they do not teach you how to play duelyst since gate/manatra decks are built around ignoring the one thing that makes duelyst great, the board.
Neutral Cards
This not a deck, but just a collection of some of the best general purpose neutral cards that can fit into a lot decks.
https://www.bagoum.com/deckbuilder#MTozMDEsMzoxOTA1MiwzOjExMDg0LDM6MTEwODgsMzoxMDk4MSwzOjEwMDEzLDM6MTExMjUsMzoxMDMwMywzOjExMTA1LDM6MTEwNDMsMzoxMDMwNiwzOjEwMzA1LDM6MTA5NzUsMzoxMTExNSwzOjEwOTU5LDM6MTEwNjQsMzoxMTAzMCwzOjExMDkz
I have made it to S rank for many seasons now, with frequent top fifty’s when I have the time to play competitively and occasional top tens. You can check out the rest of my stuff here:
Change Logs:
Summary
Swarm Lillith: -3 Gibbet, +3 Bood Tear. As much as I love gibbet he probably is not worth the dust to craft him as more experienced players can play around him with ease. Meanwhile blood tear is to good to pass up.
Oblysk Vet: -3 Reassemble, -3 Shrike. +3 Blazehound, +3 Boneswarm. Just seemed like a better deal.
Midrange Faie: -3 Corona, + Hailstone. With corona nerfed, hailstone overtakes it.
Updated the Songhai section.
Added a Neutral Card section.
