One Man Army Hai - 2019ed -- S-Rank certified

[owlbeastmd]

Greetings, comrades. Your glorious leader returns with a particularly spicy twist on an old favorite. Does removal irk you? Lost one too many times on account of “I haz duh wandurrrrrer?” Boxed in by a sea of horribly-positioned sandpoops while the general smugly derped his way into the opposite corner? If you’re anything like me, I’ll bet such moments make you wish you could ignore the board, your opponent’s hand, hell even his deck, and proceed to waltz over to his little hidey-hole and mince him to hamburg with your bare hands. Lucky for you, that fantasy just might be your new reality. Order now and we’ll throw in 420.69% more backstab. Call today!

A closer look:

A. The Minions

Lol wtf are those? Why in the sweet name of saint F#$# would you want your opponent’s removal spells to be anything but dead draws? Jeez, it’s almost like you want to lose.

B. Shidai over Reva

Reva poops out minions. Minions are poop. We’ve been over this. Enter Shidai: sleek, sexy, and chock full of what may be the most underrated suite of emotes the game has ever known. Her spell swords are also pretty cool. Like actually. All four have synergy with the artifact playstyle this deck features and keep the gameplan forever dynamic (also renders it noob-proof when the netdecking happens as well lol).

C. The Backstab Core

This deck runs the standard artifact shell with a new twist: backstab. Amazing what cyclone mask and damage spells up the ass make viable, huh? Flicker in particular shines in this deck, allowing shidai to move into the corner earlier and bypass full surrounds earlier iterations of artifact hai could not. Oh, and the numbers are like, insane:

flicker + mos = 7 dmg for 5
flicker + 2x o blow / kotetsu = 8 dmg for 5
flicker + 2x mos = 12 dmg for 7
bangle + flicker + mos = 14 dmg for 8

Keep in mind these figures assume empty boards as well. Unlike minions, artifacts cannot be blood-of-aired by random noobs so it’s not unreasonable to plan around prexisting artifacts or obscuring blows. Oh, and the ancient technique of ass-to-wall doesn’t work well in this arena due to the threat of cyclone mask and damage spells. 9/10 you will win vs campers (Note: these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Not intended to diagnose or treat disease)

D. The Gameplan

Ah yes, the red tape. Unfortunately, not all is sunshine and saberspines for this deck. It’s notoriously difficult to pilot, with fumbles as minor as mis-positioning your general turn one often costing you games. You have to plan your turns out in advance and know when to flip from backstab to cyclone, control to face, and so on. Furthermore, the RNG of shidai’s bbs rolls will often change which lines of play are best for a given board state, and you will have to adapt on the fly or get crushed trying. I’d give a bit more advice on subtleties I learned the hard way, but frankly this deck is cancer when piloted properly and I really don’t want to be playing against it myself. Glhf, I guess.

E. Closing Thoughts

In all seriousness, this deck isn’t bad. Better yet, the meta seems to be deviating ever more towards cheesy or trial-oriented decks which lack the pings and heals necessary to consistenly deal with this type of output. If you have extra spirit and are looking for a new flavor of play, look no further. You won’t be disappointed.

[mrmana3]

phone ringing Yes hello? Is this customer service? … Ok, uh I have some complaints about your product. I faced this Zir’an on ladder with it, and I kept hitting her. … No she didn’t die. She just kept healing over and over! … N-no. NO! Healing DID break my artifacts and I died instead!

And that’s not all! Then I had this other game, and I was ignoring everything. THEN this stupid bird thing started flying at me and smacked me like four times! … Idk. I think it was “Ka noom cock” or somethin’ … What do you mean I can’t have 3 attack?! This is unacceptable! Get me the manager now! I need to have a word with them. @owlbeastmd

[phoenixtoasches]

Stupid Songhai memes (for beginners)

constructed version holds even with both imo. They can’t heal your output if you open right

Yeah, in general, decks with healing up the wazoo or khan decks will be bad matchups. Against healing decks, you will most likely autolose which is usually why I auto concede when I see a ziran. With aggro cass, you might still have a chance if you can absolutely melt their face early with nut draws but its still an uphill climb.

Luckily, these decks aren’t too present on ladder, but if they are for you (or you’re just a salt songhai main and want to punish filthy healers), you can slot in some firestorm mantras in the decks along with a few other changes. Mantra helps a lot, believe it or not, in those healing matches but it’s still an uphill battle. I don’t have an artifact/mantra list though, so you’ll have to ask someone else.

Great deck, @owlbeastmd, I disagree with the absence of minions but it looks like your deck would still work without.

[project2el]

The intro is just poetry.

[phoenixtoasches]

Just played this deck from rank 19 to rank 10 winning every single game except for one healyonar against whom I just auto conceded because #healischeat.

[niklaren]

This looks familiar :3
https://duelspot.com/deck/one-woman-army-shidai/
(Not that I’m the first person to play this archetype by a long shot haha)
I love this deck style and am glad for it to get some publicity, plus you did a much better job of explaining the game plan and combos.
I’d recommend people to try it but it gets pretty easily countered if people care to, and while it’s a lot of fun to play it can be less fun to play against.

[nomnomnomnom]

wait a minute… ive seen this before… lol

EDIT: yours looks way better

[isbee]

I sometimes play a version of this.

[owlbeastmd]

Thanks! I guess the only hint I’d give is that control and damage are one in this deck, and as such, can come in many forms. For example, sometimes using backstab first to clear board before building to cyclone is the better play… especially as player 1. In addition, aggressive starts are sometimes needed to stop ramp plays which punish you harder than the opponent being able to go face (ex ramping into an early kron, shadow dancer, or emp). Winrate skyrocketed when I implemented the above. 11 artifacts + 2 o blows means you don’t have to play keep-away the entire game. In fact, baiting the general in close to remove that cyclone so you can guarantee a combo next turnis integral to winning many boardstates.

[nomnomnomnom]

i prefer baiting with bloodrage mask on mine for budget purposes, but i would totally use cyclone if i had the glitter. it really is a fun archetype to play, (in my opinion). i compared the version you made on the thread i was using and swapped out thunderbomb (instead of using barrage) it helps a lot with dealing with swarm players. how do you deal with strategos decks tho?

[owlbeastmd]

I think that mu is in your favor, as strategos lacks the pings to deal with your artifacts. You may have to delay their jax by taking a tile early as p1 before switching to cyclone / damage spell keep away. hold ghost lightning for jax unless you can bait it to kill them that turn with a flicker/ mist walk combo. Start replacing for a burst combo once you’ve gotten him into the mid teens OR burst combo early and win with cyclone/damage spells, since strategos will comes out later if he’s forced to turtle. General line of play is to sculpt hand for artifacts/keep away early, only building towards burst if you draw multiple combo pieces or fail to draw ghost lightning the turn he goes on 6. Also be suspicious if he seems to avoid ramping after you’ve revealed artifacts, as I’ve seen multiple EMPs being run in that list, though that doesn’t really change how you’d play given you’re already anticipating jax on 6 since metallurgist is almost always coming down early.

[victorious23]

One one hand, I hate artihail and spellhai. On the other, I really like good write ups.

Liked

[owlbeastmd]

Playtesting against opponents with demonstrable skill suggest the fault and aggro cass mus are more even than originally anticipated. Kha represents at most 12 on the turn he comes down, so you can easily outrace / threaten damage to the point where he cannot play fault until it’s too late. Only card which is kinda dead in that mu is o blow, since it enables kha lethals. As for cass, you generally should be going backstab early. O blow is very strong in this mu, as most of her minions dies to your damage spells, and chained desolators will not outrace an early bangle play. Only true counter I’ve found thus far are ziran and kaleos decks running zendo.

[boronian]

Added it to the wiki!

[unktrial1]

From my experience, this is one of those dangerous but fragile decks where if your opponent knows what you’re running, it’s wayyy harder to win.

I play mostly xor, and it’s usually pretty good against no-minion hai decks. Sarlac, Gor, shadow dancer and desolator pings off artifacts, swarms soak up a lot of the damage spells, aphotic drain + fugitive will drag out game forever.

[eurasianjay]

Worst thing about this deck is the pilot smh.

#MakeAbyssGreatAgain

[zerounderscoreou]

mu

Took me quite some time to realize it’s not a greek letter.

Reminded me of r_good’s deck I saw on his stream last year, was planning to check it out (both Reva & Shidai versions as I prefer Shidai personally).

Artihai

[nyawang]

Greetings !