Usually I like to put in a ton of games before I put out a thread, but new general hype has got me to excited to wait, first I did Ragnora, and now its time for Maehv! Catch the stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/d3athsadvocate
Tempo
Maehv is so interesting, her bbs really brings out the power in a lot of forgotten cards. To get the best use out of her you want lots of small body targets to sacrifice, healing to compensate for the self damage, and some dying wish.
Prophet of the White Palm prevents the self damage of her bbs and has an effect that is annoying for your opponent to deal with. My favorite opening for the deck is as turn one player two, play horror burster on the globe, then play palm defensively, making it really hard to prevent that burster from turning the palm into a monster. Speaking of Horror Burster oh man does he have some powerful synergy with Maehvs BBS.
Ephemeral shroud has largely phased out of the meta since its nerf to 1/1 but its absolutely perfect to be used in combination with her bbs, as are the subpar bodies of the healing minions that are a natural pick for her.
The deck is very focused on abusing her bbs, so crypto can really do a ton of work and is another one of the decks better openers. Gnasher and Desolator are basically made for her and are pretty much auto includes for any deck you make for her.
Maehv really doesn’t have the tools to make either punish or ritual banishing consistent so instead I try to put the removal package in the form of minions like Sunset Paragon, who is a pretty exceptional counter to a lot of things in the meta, and of course the aforementioned Gnasher.
This deck sports a very low curve with a fairly aggressive gameplan so Nekomata comes to the rescue as a natural compliment to Maehvs bbs with lots of powerful cards it can draw for you. Between Nekoma, desolator, and the fast gameplan you don’t tend to have an issue with card advantage. Sphere and whip are pretty much auto includes for every abyss deck, and void pulse is a very natural fit for Maehv.
Its a very competitive top notch deck and so far it has about an 90% winrate, given thats a small sample size of 30 games or so, but still, its been performing exceedingly well.
Edits:
Traded one Nekoma for one Revenant. I left rev out because I figured he would be to slow for the deck and a poor Maehv target. I still believe that, but I think he makes a great one of to top off the curve, and I replaced the one Nekoma since most of the time it was a more late game option to refill my hand anyways.
Big Abyss
Revenant, vorpal, emp, darkfire sacrifice is a powerful package that I am quite fond of. Its usually more Lilith’s thing, but maehv likes a bunch of cheap units for her bbs anyways, so she has plenty of darkfire fuel. Darkfire is also good with some of her other favorite tools, desolator and Gnasher. Its a powerful and effective deck with lots of healing, dispel, and aoe to deal with just about any match up. It can match the lategame potential of most decks, and it maintains card advantage with its high curve, sphere, and desolator.
Dying WIsh
I was skeptical at first but oh man is a ramp based dying wish deck good with her. Put in a pretty decent amount of testing and its really scary. Ramping into early grimes or vorpals is devastating.
Grimes is great with Mauvs BBs. Tons of great targets to get reduced by lurking fear, most of which Maehv likes to run anyways. Darkfire is often useful just for procing stuff even outside of proper ramp, and between nekoma, cycle, desolator, and a medium curve card advantage does not tend to be an issue.
Can play aggressively, or go the long game. It has tons of sustain, and a lot of neat BBS tricks.
Variax
So this one still runs lots of healing and the Maehv staples I established in the previous deck, but it takes a very different gameplan favoring ramp and minions with a higher attack power.
Maehvs awesome BBs is pretty cool, it nixes the damage and summons one husk per attack power of the sacrificed target, allowing for a much quicker and more powerful snowball then the other two generals. But it does require you to have a sacrifice target and thus why most of the deck sports three attack or more on its minions.
Your primary goal with the deck is to find and ramp out Variax as soon as possible. You usually want to place celebrants globe far back defensively so you can pick it up when the time is right. The ramp also makes early EMPs a vallid option, and it is both a sollid meta counter and a great Awesome BBs target.
Between its medium curve, desolator, and the fact that once Variax hits your hand barely matters, the deck does just fine for card advantage. Its a powerful deck with a lot of snowball potential but it is a bit slower and needs to draw the right cards to really perform well.
I have not tested it as much as the first list yet, but its performing decently so far.
Edits:
Trading Void Hunter for EMP to help counter the meta, and up the curve, hes a natural choice with ramp anyways.
Traded lightbender and celebrant for shroud and rejuvinator. Deck can really take advantage of rejuv by often being in the position to heal without your opponent having taken damage and it needed another push to get to its late game, and shroud is just one of her favorite bbs targets.
Midrange
Now I have been wanting to experiment with a more midrange list like this, currently I have the two extremes with really aggressive tempo, and lategame carry variax. Having Variax as a one of to top off her curve was my initial thought when I saw the generals awesome BBs. The deck skips horror burster since I was unimpresed with it after I found out how it interacted with her bbs, and am running less coppies of situational cards to make room for the decks late game plan.
Edits:
Traded Horror burster for cryptographer as I dislike that burster can target its own husk.
Mech
I know no one is probably to thrilled about seeing Mechazor, but I just had to try it out as it seems quite complementary to Maehv. All those crappy mech parts are great sacrifice targets, and thanks to her BBs you get some pretty exceptional value out ZOr and you keep it from being a liability. ZOr is also semi tutorable with Nekomata which really helps the decks consistency, add those two to desolator and you don’t struggle with card advantage either.
It doesn’t have as much healing as I would like, and unlike the Cass version it doesn’t have a way to get a dispelled mechazor back in the fight so you need to be careful with your placement of it especially vs vanar and non titan lyonar.
As usual mech decks are always competitive, but without a good re position tool I doubt it will be one of my preferred variants.
Edits:
Traded Nekoma for three Revenant. If we are in the position to need Nekoma with this deck that means we have probably lost, id rather just go for top decking Revenants to end games quicker and or if they manage to answer mechazor.
I have made it to S rank for many seasons now, with frequent top 50s when I have the time to play competitively and occasional top tens. Since I have not had the time to stream as much as I want, I just try to share some of my things each week to fill in the downtime. You can check out the rest of my stuff here:
https://forums.duelyst.com/t/deathsadvocate-s-master-thread-unearthed-prophecy/11337
