Game-play for Apex Starhorn and Gramps:
Splice S Rank
Long description of deck.
A proper Vaath Smash deck. I named Splice because Magmar is all about genetic perfect, evolution, and all that stuff, combined with the fact that it is simultaneously aggressive and control. While it focuses on controlling the field it gets pretty aggressive with Vaath himself usually going face with him once he has three or more attack while your spells and minions control the board.
An update to my previous top 10 deck from ancient bonds, its gotten quite the overall, but has yet again proved to be another top tier deck.
While the core of the deck remains the same with the basic golem package and the Crypto/Drogon combo I shifted its curve up a bit and included some really cool new tech.
So lets talk about the new tech, the biggest one is Magesworn. Man this card is incredible for Vaath, it completely shuts down Vanar since all there removal is below the threshold, and it makes ghost seraphims effect read āyou cant cast spells,ā it completely shuts down the incredibly toxic gates/mantra songhai decks, although they usually have panda to deal with it but it can buy you a ton of time, it also shuts down Cassyva pretty hard to. It can just strait up win the game when rampped out and placed safely in the back vs those factions, and its a fairly easy replace vs the rest. It also shuts down BBs, which is especially cool with Vaath since just a single cast of your BBs before it comes down can provide a ton of value, unlike most that need to be spammed to be effective. While it may seem a bit counter productive with the Drogon combo, its not really an issue because the times you play magesworn, it pretty much wins the game for you, and you just donāt play it the rest of the time.
The next big card tech card is Sunset paragon which is a phenomenal and underplayed card, it provides us with an effective counter to mechazor that magmar usually lacks, dispel just doesnāt really cut it since all the mech players run repositoners, and gives us even more aoe which is extra important with Azure Summoning vet hanging around. And finaly the new grandmaster as a one of, 9 mana is a little expensive, but between flash, kujata, and the decks ability to drag the game out its a win condition all by its self.
Drogars effect is indeed exponential, Drogar+Cryptographer lets you go from 3 attack to a whopping 18. Even if you only have a single drogar and no cryptographer, combining it with a late game Vaath makes him just an absolute monster. Add ramp into this mix and you can pull off some silly things real quick.
So besides the tech cards we have the usual magmar staples, leaving us with a deck that has incredible removal for midrange/slow decks, aoe for swarm, azure, and walls, healing/shields to shut down aggro, magesworns ability to shut down entire archetypes while barely bothering you, and the ability to end games quickly and or suddenly with drogon, a high curve to obviate the need for draw power, and a powerful late game with Vaath and big minions.
Its an extremely powerful deck with an answer for everything and no particularly bad match up, while being the bad match up for a lot of the top tier decks. Its only downside is it tends to be a fairly reactive deck supplying few threats of its own other then Vaath himself, so when you cant find the right answers for the right match up it can be a tough game.
Edits:
I decided to opt out of natural selection and the golem package in favor of Grove Lion and Tiger/Thumping. I feel lion helps with survive-ability more then ragebinder, and tiger does natural selections job early on without conflicting with magesworn later on, and is a classic with thumping which also wont conflict with magesworn.
Novocaine Competitive: Midrange/Pain combos.
Long description of deck.
It got its name due to things in the deck being numb to all the self inflicted pain.
The self damaging ramp has fun synergy with taygete and sunsteel, While of course helping you drop early makantors or lavaslashers. Thumping wave is actually much more often used to hurt our own guys then with rush, its combo with taygete or thunderhorn are pretty devastating. Add that to your basic golem package and magmar staples and you have an effective mid-range deck with a surprising amount of AOE despite the lack of plasma.
It curves nicely throughout the game, and gets away without draw as It can win really fast, and as always Vaath by himself gives you a solid lategame. You tend to pull ahead early, and win if top decking does happen.
Predator: Apex, Competitive/Gimmicky
Long description of deck.
Initially I was incredibly skeptical of Apex, but I was very surprised at how effective it was. Its still ultimately a gimmick deck since there is always the chance your opponent can drop an even better field then you, but most of the time its just insane value.
So of course we have magmars powerhouse late game cards, juggernaught is also exceptionally good with ramp. Then instead of just focusing on ramping minions we ramp Apex as well with spell reducing minions. Starhorn keeps our hand topped off despite tossing out some early game stuff, and helps us dig for apex.
We have the basic golem package with three ways to get out turn two lavalashers, which also provides a touch of healing, ragebinders bond effect even works with apex.
The deck is intentionally spell light since it wants mostly creatures for apex, and you donāt want to conflict with magesworn. Magesworn can also auto win you games vs certain match ups.
Edits:
Trading Manaforger For tiger. As much as I love the concept of a forged apex its just not really practical, tiger is great with apex and helps give us some more early game control that we need.
Impale: Competitive: Aggro
Long description of deck.
I call it Impale because thatās exactly what it does to people with all of its horns and spikes.
Do you want to kill people fast? Do you like to just SMORC at face! Well I have the deck for you! The only thinking you need to do with the deck is when your comboing rancor or deci/spikes, rest of the time, just go face!
A very powerful and quick aggro deck, only one thing changed for it in the expansion, Teradon. Man he is an incredible buff targetā¦can you believe he replaced Lavalasher!? Yea thatās right, this deck does not run lavalasher because he is way to slow and he doesnāt go face! Thatās how quick this abomination is.
I have made it to S rank for many seasons now, with occasional top 50s when I had the time to play competitively. Since I have not had time to start streaming like I want, I figured I would just share some of my stuff each week and get my name out there so the community knows me a little better for when I do eventually get around to it. I have a lot of new stuff I plan to put out, and will get a new master thread up for the expansion when I can, in the mean time check out my previous thread:
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