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The Ascension of Scioness Sajj, From Memehood to S-1

Sajj until recently was meme-tier there was literally no reason to play her over one of the other Vetruvian generals. But that changed with the Trials of Mythron, Sajj has ascended to a top tier threat and I have ascended with her to S-1.

S-1

The deck I used to climb there:

deckLandscapeVetruvian


The choice of Cards:

Lost Artificer is your best opener P1T1, It also lets you have a minor board presence while you are trying to ascend.

Atom Klinger has Anti-Synergy with Lost Artificer but gets the job done nevertheless. He is a sticky threat that if ignored can lead to some high burst or alternately to help you clear the road to ascension.

Skyppy needs to be used carefully since starting with 6 cards makes it easy to mill the artifact. Can optionally be substituted with Metalmeld or the Artifact searching spell.

Silhouette Tracer is the Star of the deck, Ideally you want to use him T2 if possible. The quicker you reach the other side of the field the quicker you will ascend. We use Silhouette Tracer over Neurolink because Nerolink is to slow (if used with Windstriker) or makes your deck inconsistent and clogs your limited hand space with useless cards (if used with dragonlark).

Notion of Starless Eternity is obviously the reason we are playing this deck. You can’t ascend to a different plane without him. Before people start crying “Sajj OP, nerf Notion”, I want to point out that Notion is fine and the real culprit lies elsewhere (we will discuss that in a while).

Aurora’s Tears is the most OPed card in this deck. Seriously, if you want to modify this deck you must not remove Aurora’s Tears unless it gets nerfed. And it should get nerfed given toxic it is and how much it limits design space.

Scion’s First wish is always good, not much to say here.

Rasha’s Curse is for finishing off weakened enemies, Removing Artifacts in the mirror match, Dealing two damage to something True Strike style and emptying your hand if you have a Skyppy on the field. When playing against Vanar try to keep Rasha’s + First wish in your hand to get rid of their evil wisp.

Time Maelstrom isn’t absolutely necessary but it does give you an alternate wincon if your opponent really doesn’t want to let you ascend. If you do have it you can deal ungodly amounts of damage after you ascend but Aurora’s tears usually does that better.

Blood of Air should be used to remove minions who will give you a very bad day if left unanswered like Zendo and 4winds Magi.

The artifacts aren’t worth going that deep into, you just want lots of (preferably cheap) artifacts so that you can ascend and then so you can abuse your new found power.


General tips on playing the deck:

The most important thing to remember is while your top priority is ascending, you do not have to ascend in order to win. Quite often the good old Tears combo is enough to finish off your opponent, especially since you have so many cheap artifacts to abuse it with.

Aurora’s Tears are the most OPed card in this deck but you never want to see them early in the game. You should always replace it unless you have ascended/are about to ascend or if your opponent isn’t watching their health and you have a sufficient amount of artifacts in your hand.

Always keep Silhouette Tracer in your hand until you ascend.

Always aim to ascend as soon as possible.

If you failed to ascend before 6 mana against Kaleos (shame on you!) Keep in mind that Zendo will be coming and equip Iris barrier to avoid taking damage.


My comments on this deck in Q&A format:

Q: Is this deck OPed?
A: Yes it is OPed, otherwise some scrub like me wouldn’t be able to achieve S-1 with it.

Q: Why do you think Aurora’s Tears should be nerfed?
A: Aurora’s tears have always been a problematic card but it was very hard to see since Sajj was so underplayed. A conditional +6 damage (or if you have ascended, +12! damage) is a bit too much for a 1 mana card. It also limits design space around artifact based Vet decks since OK stuff like Notion become broken because of it. Possible changes would be Cutting the attack bonus in half (from +2 attack per artifact to +1) or increasing its cost to 2. I think the former is better since the latter doesn’t actually decrease the ridiculous burst potential it has.

Q: How does this Deck do against Brome?
A: Very good. If you manage to fulfill your trial before or at roughly the same time as Brome you will win. I lost only once to Brome with this deck and that was because I didn’t get Silhouette Tracer in time.

FUN FACT: If Brome Would just leave Jax Truesight alone instead of dropping Strategos right after him he would be significantly harder for this deck to beat :shushing_face:

Q: Can I ask you any other question?
A: Ask away, I will answer if I can.


Update: I don't know why I didn't include the win rate originally, but since I remembered that this important to judge a decks success I decided to post it here. I played 33 games and went 27W/6L. My match history actually shows 28W/5L but one of those wins was do to my opponent Rage conceding when they thought I had lethal (I really didn't and was in an otherwise unwinnable situation) so I count that as a lose.
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Well done, m8!

But don’t touch my aurora tears! :grin:

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Thanks for the compliment.

Sadly, I am certain that Tears needs to be nerfed. Of course you could just kill Notion instead but that would make Sajj go back to the fun and interactive OTK combo which, much like pre-nerf mantra, is really frustrating to fight against (albeit with massive consistency issues unlike mantra). Do you really want to lose because your opponent pulled a cheesy 20+ damage combo out of hand with nothing you could do about it?

Even now such out of hand combo requires notion played, and 7 mana on average for 3x2 mana artifacts + tears.

Also it’s too early to make any changes. I’ve seen swarm players playing lots of minions in the back row and only then advancing. It’s -1 turn of tempo, but traditional OTK is not very consistent, so actually I guess this tactic makes sense. Let’s see if the meta adapts.

Perhaps I’m rushing a bit with calling nerfs to Tears and the meta will adapt to this deck, which wouldn’t be that hard for it to do honestly, lots of counters to this deck exist that simply aren’t played now. Maybe it is because I played lots of OTK sajj back in the day and hence know how to abuse it properly, although that still doesn’t change the fact that Tears promote an unhealthy play style.

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Good job :wink: !
On a side note: If they would ever ever nerf anything among those or Sajj related cards they should just consider the Mythron minion, as that’s the only reason why now this archetype is not meme anymore.
I hope that if they will actually nerf it they will still leave it competitive though :confused: .

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I think it’s easy to tech against artifact decks. If they become too strong, players will build good counters.

By the way, I can proudly say that I was one of those who were very excited with the Vetruvian Trial, while a lot of players were saying it was crap. It’s nice to be right :slight_smile:

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This is the meanest counter to OTK Vaath so far.

Look at my eternal doll:

grafik

Eternal Heart+ Obdurator is a mean thing… and then she flew away. Gotta pet Skyppy more for bringing such nice tools.

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“unhealthy” compared to what?
how often are you able to end games before your opponent’s 7 mana turn and how many have you won after your opponent played an on curve EMP?
the one game i played with the vet trial i completed it and was still in a position where the tempo loss of playing the 5 mana 3/3 would have taken me from a winning position to a losing position.
the one time i lost to it was when my opponent stayed against the back wall blasting until they had dragonlark + neurolink to fly straight to the other side. if they walked forward and tried to bypass my units with silhouette tracer they wouldn’t have had any artifacts intact when they got to the opposite wall.

You have me in your ingame friendlist, if you doubt my word you can always watch some of my replays and see for yourself how the deck works.

i just watched your last 3 wins. you didn’t play notion of starless eternity in any of them and only played aurora’s tears in 1 of them.
clearly artifact sajj is a strong tempo deck and atom klinger and obdurator strengthen that archetype but the trial seems like an alternate win-con that will rarely become relevant or necessary.

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Perhaps you are right and I misinterpreted how the deck works. I am not particularly good at understanding the terms used to describe this deck and tried my best to do so the way I could. But do you agree that this is a viable archetype or do you believe that this was all Highroll/RNG/luck on my part? I ask because you are a much more respectable player than me who has a deeper understanding of the game and I would like to hear your opinion on this matter.

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I guess it depends on the exact deck and player tactics.

My deck uses notion in 80% of cases, due to the usage of tracer AND neurolink combo. I hadn’t reach S-1 of course, but the deck is doing well even in S, I just decided to test some meme archetypes now on ladder.

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your winrate speaks for itself, clearly the deck is very strong.

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I was looking for a meta Vet deck since I returned. Imagine my pleasure that it’s a Sajj deck. Thank you kind sir!

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Thanks for the list I couldnt figure a way to make it work by myself !

On the one hand, Sajj is finally a strong option.

On the other hand, I can’t make “Sajj is trash” memes anymore. At least Maehv is still meme-able

Congratulations of S-1 mate!

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image

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