Just a fun presentation of decks with a theme very suited to the faction. Break the seals when you are ready.
Pestilence: S rank
Summary
“Then I saw when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, “Come.” I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.”
This one gains the name of Pestilence as creep feels very much like a spreading disease.
My creep deck went through a couple small changes before appearing in this thread, I used to call it Force Lighting because because between the dark influence of the abyss, the spreading corruption of creep, a bunch of cards with lightning esque animations, and its favorite tool thunderhorn, it certainly has a dark side of the force Sith Lord feel to it.
Creep got one card in particular that is amazing support, Nethermeld! Its serves as both soft removal, and ways to play Juggernaught and Thunderhorn safely out of dispels reach and be able to then move them into position, while simultaneously being a counter to its self and other position changing cards. The Thunderhorn Plays this deck pulls off with combinations of Lure/Nethermeld are super fun and effective.
With how the meta has evolved, and thanks to Nethermeld, Shadow Nova is actually good again! It helps out against mirrors, cataclysm, and all the wall decks running around. While providing ideally placed creep to ping stuff, serve as psedo aoe, and to use with meld. It even made it in over my current favorite tech card, grasp of agony, and the classic creep generator crawler, since it sort of does both of their jobs.
While the rest of the new creep stuff is meh, abyss got a couple very powerful cards that have been making their way into most of my decks, Desolator and Phantasm. While its not a dedicated Phantasm deck it has a lot of great buff targets: Saberspine Tiger, Thunderhorn, and Revenant. Desolator is a god send of a card providing healing, ping, and card advantage all in one.
Between Desolator and the decks ability to close out games pretty reliably at or before 8 mana, card advantage is not an issue. Its curve is also a touch higher then it appears thanks to Sphere cycling, and the fact that nethermeld can just be saved, hell nethermeld is often a fine card to be the only thing you play in a turn at 9 mana. The deck skips dispel as between whip, nethermeld, and closing games quickly you really just don’t need it.
War: Competitive
Summary
“When He broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come.” And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.”
This one gains the title of war well because GrimWAR, SWARm, you get the point. Its a variation of my previously posted SWARm list which was originally intended for this series but ended up getting posted seperately.
A very aggressive deathwatch list featuring Grimwar. I don’t often include War and Cresendo in the same list as Cresendo is usually for less aggressive lists, but they both really fit the deck and make it work. It has a very low curve but maintains card advantage between cycle and desolator on top of ending games very quickly, and short of an early tempest its very hard to stop you if you get either Grim or Cresendo.
There is a lot of wraithling synergy going on in this one with furosa and inkling, unlike the phantasm variant this one can pretty much always get a cycle off of inkling, furosa alone makes the otherwise subpar wraithling cards worthwhile and it gets extra silly with crypto, or death watch.
Grimwar is very useful at protecting your swarm, it is not only fine, but encouraged to throw it on before you plan to go in for the kill as it will make it very hard to deal with your swarm. While you need to be a little more careful with Cresendo you should not be greedy with either of them or you risk loosing your field, if you can get a couple procs you should go for it.
Its a strong deck that can steal a lot of quick wins, but it can get shut down really hard by aoe so digging for grimwar is usually a top priority. Unearthed Prophecies helped out the deck by adding further consistency with inkling surge and the ever popular Desolator as a mini back up win condition.
Famine: Gimmicky/Competitive
Summary
“When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, “Come.” I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; but do not damage the oil and the wine.””
This deck gets the title of Famine as its a very control focused deck, it slowly starves your opponent of resources before moving in for the kill either through a big grimwar play or a buffed up phantasm minion.
Grimwar is usually reserved for aggressive lists, but this one really builds around it using the card for the long term tossing it on early, staying back, and slowly powering it up while your opponent avoids you, then you trace in for a surprise kill. Throw Artifact hunter into the mix and you can get it quite reliably.
Beyond that the deck is packed with control tools. Remember this is a deck that wants to play the long game so dont get aggressive unless its something like songhai or vet, where you know your artifacts are not safe and you need to gap close. When you think you can play it safe dont be afraid to just use tiger/rev for removal instead of trying to power them up and end the game with them.
It can struggle a bit against decks well equipped to deal with artifacts, but its a fun and surprisingly effective deck.
Death: Competitive
Summary
“When the Lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come.” I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.”
Despite the lack of deathwatch this one gains the title of Death due to its killing speed. Its a hardcore aggro face deck packing a very low curve and a lot of out of hand damage.
Has the usual aggro tools, the phantasm package, good removal, and even darkseed. You could go a touch more midrange and run thunderhorn instead of darkseed, or you could go all in on the darkseed combo and try to fit spelljammer as well.
Not to much more to say about as its pretty simple, just SMORC your opponent down.
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:
