Songhai decklists (est. patch 1.93)

[phoenixtoasches]

Title says it all. Its been around a month since anyone has talked about or proposed new decklists for Songhai and I’m interested in seeing what you guys can come up with. Getting bored with my current mid-range deck. Memes welcome.’

Also, here’s a start:

The goal of this deck is to swarm hard in the beginning until you reach mid-game at which point you use geomancer in combination with mentor and cryptographer to burn.

More specifically, in early turns start swarming anyway you can with zyx, gazer, and replicant. Focus on using BBS to consistently get seekers out on the field. Early game removal is ethereal blades and gotatsu only so use wisely. Try to maintain some bodies for the next stage. Make sure to fish out geomancer.

In the mid-game (5 mana), you should start to focus on one of the two strats, based on what cards you have already used so far. If you use up nearly all methods to re-activate BBS and don’t have mentor on the field, try to focus on burning with magi as well as utilizing illusionist by using all spells and get aggro fast. This is not an ideal situation, but can still work if your intiial swarm is alive and got some damage in. An ideal situation would be having multiple ways to reactivate BBS, if you can then find geomancer FAST (should be a bit easier with replicant and gazer). Turn BBS into phoenix fire and start burning next turn. Use your swarm to block yourself in and protect from enemy while continuing to burn. Bamboozle and bear seal are for getting rid of threats like slasher and such that have really huge bodies. Try and ping with Magi as well, but phoenix fire comes first.

If you reach late-game and your opponent isn’t close to dying or is healing too much then you lose. While this is swarm, overall it is still aggro and will lose to healing thus it makes sense that if you find a vaath player just auto-concede since he demolishes both aggro and swarm especially in the way this deck plays them.

Would be nice to test this deck out, but I don’t have the spirit, possible problems with it I predict would be; running out of steam quick and hand, not having enough mana to pull of early game combos (maybe add in a celebrant?), swarm being too weak to make a difference compared to Lilith’s which can be done more easier for the same stats (but ranged in addition does make good ping) and burn not being enough to finish off opponents consistently.

In case anybody says it, I did try to work arcanysts in (i.e. owlbeast and conjurer), but it wasn’t compatible enough since this deck only uses swarm early game and focuses the mid-game on burn.

I think swarm/burn hybrid is interesting, but I suck at making decks. So there you go; offer comments, critiques and hopefully your own songhai decks.

[alplod]

I felt the urge to try smth new, so I’ve crafted 3 Sarugi (dunno why). One of the decks I created is very similar to yours in the sense that it uses the same wincon:

It’s just an early draft as of now, but I’m testing and improving it (currently in gold). Finishers are fun as hell! Literally, hell.

[phoenixtoasches]

Now that you reminded me of Sarugi I just got an idea. Would a deck that focuses on blasting the enemy with spells late-game work (assuming that cards like Magi and Avatar aren’t on the field)? You would use cards like Sarugi, Hogi, and calligrapher and Eclipse. Then maybe you could just use swarm to protect yourself until you reach that point? But no, swarm couldn’t protect you long enough and there is no guarantee the spells RNG gives you would be consistent…

Maybe it could though. If you focus the entire deck towards making swarm and only include a few of the cards mentioned then when it gets to late game you can start using those cards to draw spells outside your deck as fuel instead the cards in your main deck which are dedicated to swarm anyways. That would be interesting because then you could be making a deck that is actually two decks since the main deck is entirely swarm and then when that runs out in the late game you create a second deck using cards like Calligrapher and Eclipse that can create cards out of the blue and cards like Sarugi to make them cheap and then Hogi to maintain board by drawing out more swarm minions.

The only two problems is can swarm last you long enough and can you pull off the late game spell plan considering that all the cards used for it cost 5 mana minimum? I might try to make something. Hopefully you were able to read all of this and if so tell me your thoughts.

[alplod]

I don’t think that kind of lategame will give you wins. RNG can be your worst enemy.

[phoenixtoasches]

Well, is the pool from which calligrapher can pull out of limited or inclusive of all songhai spells?

[eurasianjay]

It pulls from all in faction spells.

[phoenixtoasches]

Dang it, Well out of the 38 Songhai spells that exist there are around 14 that in the context of this deck I think would be considered bad draws so that’s a 37% chance of getting bad draws but I think this is mitigated by the fact that you can draw at least 3 different cards meaning that there is only a 12% chance that all the cards you draw will be bad. So yeah, you can’t really perform this kind of strategy late game…not unless you include within your swarm minions something that can proc off the spell casting. But then this would turn too much into an arcanyst deck wouldn’t it?

[phoenixtoasches]

P.S. Everybody feel free to share your own decks, this thread wasn’t to talk solely about my deck ideas. Or maybe I’m the one talking too much, but if I’m talking then someone else is listening which means…which means…?

[phoenixtoasches]

The purpose of illusionist in this deck is to swarm, but the real game plan is to burn once swarm has been established with geomancer. In addition that game plan is too specific and unreliable to go off because you need all 3 pieces, enough of the tokens on the board to make it worth using, and enough buff from Kindling. The only reason why I didn’t make a full on swarm deck in the first place is because any Magmar player worth its salt can demolish it with plasma storm on mana 5 which is why we switch gears to geomancer/phoenix fire on mana 5.

[neme6ix]

Basic of the combo = Protocol + Mass Flight + Serpenti.
Flying Serpenti intensifies.

[phoenixtoasches]

What's the best play you could make with a full hand and infinite mana?

I think it’s sandswirl reader and sandswirl reader to bounce eachother across the entire board making infinite sand tiles, so you would win instantly, unless plasma feelsbadman

Your new home good sire.

[isgopet]

Midrange things.

[alplod]

Thinking more about your deck, @phoenixtoasches.

There is actually no way to play swarm in Hai. No way to buff the whole swarm as Lyo and Kara can, no way to effectively cash it in as Abyssian can. In Hai your swarm is just a way to die from AOE with no possible positive outcome. Also, swarm minions are so squishy that you even can’t use them to effectively trade, and they are not a threat whatsoever.

So, in the end, the idea seems unjustified and nonviable to me. Nothing personal.

Win con is OK. Early game sucks.

[eurasianjay]

You can however, outswarm swarm

[alplod]

What are you playing here? o_O

[eurasianjay]

Reva Swarm side project I’m working on.

Post soonTM.

[unreason]

When you say eclipse here, you mean Heaven’s eclipse, right? Because it reads “Draw 3 spell cards from your deck,” so it won’t generate cards you’re not decking like you’re hoping.

[phoenixtoasches]

Ah, you’re right. Maybe try to put some more cheap spells in the deck that could double as swarm support? In any case, the win-con of the deck is pretty solid with the exact cards being used in debate, the more concerning topic is whether swarm in Songhai could be viable or as part of hybrid.

[alplod]

The only swarm support Hai has is ancestral divination. Which is card draw. You may consider.

[phoenixtoasches]

Mirror Meld is one although I do wish this card would work on Zyx giving you a board of four 1/2’s on a 4 mana turn

Heartseeker squad is another if you have the board for it.

Twilight reiki is somewhat similar to divination, but risky and very dependent upon RNG putting in the same boat as Calligrapher. Even so, it can still be helpful and its effect is comparable to Blue conjurer in the short run which is where Songhai has potential.

And if I wanted to be really stubborn there is also Koan of Horns.

None of these would work in the hybrid deck I suggested since they all attempt to burst out a swarm in the mid-game with some pre-existing board whereas mine attempts to burn mid-game. But in a pure swarm deck they could be viable assuming some card in the recent expansion can pin it all together into a deck.

And for the post I mentioned above where I said a cheap spell that can double as swarm support, I meant something that can buff the swarm or an important piece of it away from death by plasma/rebuke, not something that would actually bring in more swarm since most of those cards are high in cost.