Intro
Hey! This is stormguard798, and I’m one of the tournament organizers for the upcoming Team Eternal Journey (TEJ) and Tuesday Night Eternal (TNE) Charity Peasant Team Unified Tournament for Child’s Play. (Quite the mouthful, eh?)
Unsure as to what that is, and want to know more? All the details are laid out in the
Reddit post.
Now, what exactly is this format? Well, Peasant is a format consisting of only commons and uncommons. That comes with the caveat of the following banlist:
*However, you will be pleased to know the cycle of cards that add random cards to your market (
Scrapmetal Fury,
Xumuc Whisper,
Watchwing Support,
Vicious Overgrowth and
Xumuc Coercion) WILL be legal for this tournament. However, if you take any rare, promo or legendary out of your market, you will automatically receive a game loss. Commons and uncommons are, of course, fair game.
Additionally, there’s an extra twist with the Team Unified format. In this format, you will be playing in teams of 3, each with a different decklist. Only 4 copies of any non-power card can be played across all 3 decks. However, copies may be divided amongst decks in any way you choose.
Sounds a little complicated? Don’t worry. Having never played Peasant before, we’ve enlisted the help of some fantastic community Peasant players to advise everyone on exactly what they need to know for this format. Kicking things off we have the wonderful noverb, who will start by giving everyone a brief run-down of all the important cards of this format.
noverb: Hello again peasants of Eternal! It’s time again to go over all the new cards added to Eternal through the lens of Peasant.
For those new to Peasant, the format is great for quite a few reasons. The barrier to entry is so low, you can create a deck right after finishing the tutorial. You can play strategies that you enjoyed in draft, but as fully fleshed out decks. It’s also just a breath of fresh air for those looking to get away from the higher powered formats. However, that’s not to say the format isn’t high powered. There are many cards that you may be familiar with such as:
Eremot's Machinations,
Shoal Stirrings,
Backbreaker,
Kindling Carver, and
Autotread!
The name of the game this time, as stated above, is Team Unified. It’s not just about picking the best deck, but instead picking three that don’t overlap! There are a lot of prominent strategies, however, Shadow and Fire cards appear in a lot of the best decks. So when your team is deciding on decks there are a few key cards to consider.
Vine Grafter will likely be the most contested card of the entire tournament. If your team doesn’t have four Vine Grafters, it is probably a mistake. Between Shadow having some of the best Market cards and Vine Grafter giving Regen, it’s hard not to want it in any Shadow deck you’re playing. However there are some workarounds: you could swap to a different Grafter or play the newly un-banned
Xumuc Coercion.
Kindling Carver is another contested card that is wanted by Mono Fire, Oops All One Drops, and FTS Sac. It’s hard to find a card that does its job as well as Carver so this is likely going to decide which of those three decks you bring. However, Mono Fire could also be built more aggressively, and opt not to play Carver as well.
Other cards that may be contested are removal spells like Torch, Victimless Crime, and Defile. However removal can be replaced more easily. More niche removal may even suit your purposes better! Now let’s talk about prepping for the field.
First, if it wasn’t obvious, Void synergies are everywhere. Mandrakes, FTS Sac, Dredge, and Weapon Reanimator are all decks that like to abuse the Void. So while you may think that
Victimless Crime is the best removal spell in the format,
Nectar of Unlife,
Defile,
Devouring Shadow and even
Vara's Intervention may serve your purposes better against those decks. A new card that I’m super happy to see on that front is Eavesdrop!
The next thing to ask yourself is “How well does my deck hold up against Relics?”
Backbreaker,
Edge of Prophecy,
Mysterious Waystone, and
Kodosh Sees All are standout powerhouses that you are going to want some interaction for.
Disjunction,
Ruin effects (whether on a Unit or not), and, my favorite,
Display of Menace are all options to keep in mind when deckbuilding.
I’ll leave you with one last question to check off before we look at the new cards and updated decklists: Can you stand the heat? Mono Fire decks have a wide variety of options to keep you on your toes. I would definitely prepare for the matchup, because if you don’t you may just get burned.
New Notable Market Cards:
Behold the Truth,
Dismantle,
Bathe in Light,
Carnosaur Beta,
Starkissed Wings,
Svetya's Decree,
Runesword,
Hypnotic Valkyrie,
D'Angolo Might,
Eavesdrop,
Arachnoid Terror,
Bog Fumes
It occurs to me that a lot of Inscribe cards are just good market cards because you sometimes just want to market for power, so modality is A+ here. Just a general reminder that not every deck needs a market. But if you do decide to use one, be aware that running one-ofs may reduce your teammates ability to run the full four. So work together!
New Notable Tricks:
Inoa's Fury,
Telekinetic Shackles,
Lost in Thought,
Forestall,
Well-Laid Trap,
Find The Moment,
Obstructive Flicker,
Gavel's Insight,
Bless the Wild
Combat tricks are played less in Constructed, but you will see the occasional
Finest Hour or
Aamri's Choice out of aggro decks. I wanted to take a moment to note down some cool tricks coming out of the new sets that you may want to include in your decks.
EDIT: Between the publishing of this article and the TEJ/TNE tournament, there was a pretty widespread balance patch that affected a fair number of cards in the Peasant format. So we thought we'd just touch on them very briefly.
Kickflip Monk - A card people were likely already running in the market for void-based match-ups like Sacrifice or Mandrakes, but now you could also consider running it maindeck.
Cloudscraper -
Gnash, Desert Prince this is not, but if you’re looking for a solid Time unit and are a little susceptible to fliers, this card might be exactly what you’re looking for. Inscribe means you could also run a couple copies maindeck.
Ancient Defenses - Don’t think this is really too big of a change, at least for Peasant since the Sentinel buff doesn’t change. Off the top of my head, the only card it really affects is
Feartracker, which, granted, will likely be pretty popular, but not much different otherwise.
Bullseye - The card is still conditional enough that I don’t think you want to running any maindeck, but I could also see it being a more popular market card now that it’s a strictly better
Ruin.
Throne Warden - Now this is a change I can get behind. Not that there are many Justice Midrange decks in the format outside of Argenport, but that is an incredibly solid stats to cost ratio. It also helps with the curve of such decks as well since the 4-drop slot isn’t particularly contested.
Call The Hit - On the other hand, Shadow-based Midrange decks are much more popular. And being fast-speed, this could really mess up some of the more synergy-based strategies. Expect to see a lot more of this card.
Torgov’s Wares - Now that
Unstable Form isn’t legal in the format, Elysian Control probably isn’t a massive concern either way? You could do some tricky things with
Elysian Heirloom, but that still seems too corner-case to be particularly good.
Minotaur Lighthoof - A great market option to deal with Relics that the mono-faction market otherwise can’t really interact with.
Arcanum Seeker - Even packing Overwhelm, the 1-time ultimate rather than constant growth means it’s probably still too lackluster for the Lifeforce Aggro deck.
Illuminator - Not sure exactly what archetype this card fits into, but if enabled, a 5/5 Overwhelm for 3 is no joke - that card will hit very hard. Could definitely be worth exploring.
Pre-Existing Decks (in no particular order)
The decks below are to help you not only find a deck to play but to give you an idea of what you may play against. Feel free to use any of these decks and change them as you see fit!
Xenan Mandrakes (Decklist by noverb)
New Cards: Call The Hit,
Victimless Crime,
Clinging Scavenger
No changes to the main deck at this moment. I think that
Devouring Shadow,
Defile, and
Nectar of Unlife are all better than
Victimless Crime due to their void-hate nature. Stopping your opponent from using
Shoal Stirrings and
Eremot's Machinations is especially important in the mirror. Market changes from the previous version:
Mandrake Simulacrae ->
Clinging Scavenger and
Curtain Call ->
Behold the Truth.
Unified Notes: This is the one deck that NEEDS its
Vine Grafter due to Grafter being a Mandrake. It’s arguable that you could cut
Speed Grafter but you would lose out on some of the better Market cards and would lower your Ultimate count, so be aware of that. Suggestions for an all-shadow the market include swapping
Curtain Call back in and replacing Predator’s Instinct with
Blackout the Skies to secure the Flying matchups like Valkyries and Elysian.
Mono Fire (Decklist by noverb)
Archetype Overview: Mono Fire is the most tuneable archetype due to the sheer amount of cards that do very similar things. If being aggressive is what you want to do there is a lot of customization here. I posted one generic list above but I encourage you to look at lists from past tournaments to gain some insights on potential options and design the deck that is best suited for you.
First Place Decklist by DrPringles:
Second Place Decklist by CaptainTeembro:
Top 8 Decklist by Frosted57:
Top 4 Decklist by Brionac_the_spear:
New Cards: Rune of Flame,
Warning Shot,
Battlefront Dasher,
Raging Jackal,
Blitz Stone,
Inoa's Fury,
Jeering Yeti,
Draconic Looting,
Evoker,
Hoof Stomp,
Chakram Throw
As mentioned and showcased above, you can build Mono Fire a few different ways. Aside from generic “Red Deck Wins” type of aggro, you can also build around
Flash Fire +
Touch of Force with Strangers and the Evangel. Alternatively, you could go with Sentinel tribal. Adding a market is a relatively easy task. Both
Fire Etchings and
Rust Grafter are solid picks that do not overlap in basically any other deck. You could put
Flash Fire in the Market for a backdoor win. You also have access to Flameblast,
Urn of Choking Embers,
Beacon of War, and a slew of
Ruin effects.
Unified Notes: It shouldn’t be too difficult to share the love given how deep the fire pool is. It’s arguable that you could even run two Mono Fire decks in your lineup and them both still be formidable.
stormguard798: This, of course, includes all the various Fire Aggro variants splashing a secondary faction that you could run. For instance, Skycrag for Permafrost. However, the biggest problem you would likely encounter is divvying up your
Autotreads. Both
Darkwater Vines and
Vine Grafter have Regen, which are great for stopping early aggression from Fire Aggro. That is why it’s so important for any aggressive leaning deck to pack the full 4 copies. That being said, the
Flash Fire variant of the deck doesn’t lean as aggressively as the other variants, so you might be able to get away with not having Treads there.
Combrei Ramp (Decklist by noverb)
New Cards: Rune of Relocation,
Dismantle,
Open Way Supplier,
Conspire,
Namora the Pure,
Cloudscraper,
Marisen's Legacy,
Kickflip Monk
There are a lot of new good options for this deck.
Disjunction,
Desert Marshal, and Nahid’s Distillation were all flex cards.
Disjunction can get back your
Coveted Gemstone or re-set a
Waystone Gate. It also answers problematic relics and curses from the opponent. If you aren’t worried about that, you could consider
Restorative Process for more card advantage.
Marisen's Legacy is a standout card that plays a role similar to that of a board clear. It gums up the board and stalls your opponent and assumes that you can play a better long game than most decks, which you can. Unfortunately, including
Rune of Relocation is rough. Due to
Enter the Monastery, our power base is very strict, and I don’t see space to run Rune as well.
Unified Notes: There are not many decks that overlap in cards with this deck. I don’t foresee much of a problem slotting this deck into your lineup. You just can’t run this alongside the other Relics decks, as there may be overlap with the likes of
Waystone Gate or certain market cards. The Gemstone market access may also overlap with the likes of Armory decks.
FTJ Armory (Decklist by noverb)
New Cards: Detonation Cannon,
Grenadin Rescue,
Oni Forgesmith,
Valkyrie Station,
Breach The Defenses
Detonation Cannon came in over
Gravity Glove as that last flex weapon slot. It will be a good answer to the go-wide decks that tend to get in the way of our singular Relic Weapon. I think the rest of the list is pretty tuned.
Valkyrie Station replaced
Forgeborn in the Market. That last slot was flex anyway and I could see some games where I grab the Station to buckle up for a long haul.
Gravity Glove made its way into the Market over
Shugo's Hooked Sword. This was another flex slot, and I feel like there will be more instances where I grab the Glove for various costs than grabbing the Hooked Sword for the tokens.
Unified Notes: The deck already cut the
Torches for
Furyblades to make
Calibrate better. However, there is a lot of overlap with other ramp strategies like Combrei and not much you can do to make concessions aside from just not running both decks. Dropping
Edict of Kodosh and putting
Desert Marshal back in to allow for someone to play Hooru Control would be manageable. You may also need to drop
Wanted Poster in that instance, which is likely fine given the amount of Silencing effects this deck runs. Consider a few
Oni Hybrids and Cannons in its place?
FTJ Armory (Decklist by EarthsOverseer)
New Cards: Oni Hybrid,
Coveted Gemstone,
Runesword,
From the Heavens
This version of armory looks to create huge Edges of Prophecy and play the best boardwipe in peasant,
From the Heavens. Most games you will look to stall out any early aggression, tutor an
Edge of Prophecy and play it until you grind your opponent out of resources.
Coveted Gemstone gives us some nice flexibility for a ramp card and it is not unreasonable to grab
Shugo's Hooked Sword and win with it instead of edge.
Unified Notes: Main cards to watch out when overlapping with other lists are the
Defiance and
From the Heavens.
FTS Sac (Decklist by noverb)
New Cards: Zido, Cabal Housecat,
Victimless Crime,
Grenadin Rescue,
Xumuc Coercion
Individual Card Discussion: Xumuc Coercion seems like an absolute house in this deck. You have all the fodder you need and can get access to whichever card you want at fast speed!
Zido, Cabal Housecat is coming in over
Gleaming Grenadin. With the lack of
Vine Grafter you want to make sure you have enough two-drops. That in mind,
Grenarender and
Saddled Serasaur come in as flex slots that have good use when recurred.
Unified Notes: The list posted is actually unified ready.
Vine Grafter was cut for the
Xumuc Coercion. One
Eremot's Machinations was trimmed for someone else to play it in their Market. If you don’t have a Xenan Teammate then you can bump that back up to four.
Elysian Fliers (Decklist by stormguard798)
New Cards: Puffer Humbug,
Frostpact Sprite,
Rune of Trickery,
Cyber Skimmer
Individual Card Discussion:
With a handful of additional strong 1-drop fliers, I no longer felt it necessary to include a market for some extra power. I ended up cutting
Shifting Illusion with the addition of Runes alongside
Majestic Skies and
Glen Scout as strong power sinks, but it could be worth considering if you’re drawing a bit too much power. I also included
Pitfall Trap to up our relic count a pinch so we can more consistently hit with
Calibrate, and has worked well with the deluge of cheap units that we play.
noverb: Love the inclusion of
Pitfall Trap over
Gustrider. While I noted
Puffer Humbug as a new consideration I think I would still play
Shifting Illusion over it for consistency. If I recall correctly
Permafrost is what the market slot was. That’s a reasonable swap, just wanted to note it for those who might want to revert it.
Frostpact Sprite is a banging
Ice Sprite replacement. Love that this deck just keeps going lower on the curve.
Unified Notes: If you have multiple people fighting over who gets to play the aggro deck, this seems like a solid fit. Given the likely popularity of
Vine Grafter in the format, could be a good way to take to the skies. That being said, this deck is quite weak to any deck that can gain life while pressuring well, like Mandrakes or Lifeforce Aggro, which is why it didn’t do so well at the last event.
Hooru Soldiers (Decklist by noverb)
New cards: Reliable Troops,
Ursa Squadron,
Auren Jailer,
Offbook Officer
Individual Card Discussion: This version of the deck is more focused on being low to the ground and curving out. Thanks to the recent rule change regarding adding random cards to the market, we get to play
Vicious Overgrowth as a removal spell that can trigger Amplify payoffs. Notable exclusions that could/should be in:
Permafrost and
Daring Swordmaster come to mind.
Unified Notes: The only card that may be contested is
Martial Efficiency, and in that case the other deck just needs to use a different card since it’s more of a lynchpin in this deck. However, if the other deck is Valkyries you may just want to run a different deck.
JPS Unseen (Decklist by noverb)
New Cards: Alchemy Student,
Pteriax Mount,
Toxic Wisp
This deck is similar to the JPS
Hero of the People deck since the idea is to give your unseen many useful keywords before passing them around with Exalted. However the deck may be the most RNG based deck on this list as there are times when you can win out of nowhere or give your best unit Reckless into a Deadly blocker. The main deck remains unchanged from its previous tournament debut.
Unified Notes: The
Vine Grafter is very helpful, but I would assume it’s less necessary than in other decks. You could run either of the other two Grafters as they still give your unit a battle skill. Which you want depends on your teammates’ decks and availability. As usual there are a lot of shadow removal options to swap out Defile if it is contested.
Xenan Lifeforce (Decklist by noverb)
New Cards: Arcanum Seeker,
Battlewise Elite,
Namora the Pure
Arcanum Seeker is the most exciting card to come out for this deck, although it’s not on the same power level as
Curtain Call. I’m not sure where it fits, if it does, as the deck needs a critical mass of lifegain and Lifeforce cards. While it doesn’t grow indefinitely, it does only need one trigger to become respectable and does not die to
Torch. Honestly, the cut may just be to drop
Vine Grafter for your teammates’ sake and just run the
Arcanum Seeker instead.
JPS Hero (Decklist by noverb)
New Cards: Alchemy Student,
Steel Golem,
Offbook Officer
Argenport Armory (Decklist by noverb)
New Cards: Zido, Cabal Housecat,
Victimless Crime,
Argenport Blueprints,
Xumuc Coercion
Individual Card Discussion: Zido is doing Zido things and by that I mean coming in and replacing old sac fodder. This is another deck that can run
Xumuc Coercion over
Vine Grafter to allow for another Shadow deck in your lineup. While it might not seem there are enough relics for
Rat Cage on paper, but both
Siphoner Paladin and
Argenport Blueprints can help with that. Rat Cage is also stellar with
Heirloom Blade and
Siphoner Paladin.
Unified Notes: Victimless Crime can easily be replaced with
Slay if needed. Zido and
Feartracker might be fought over if your team is running two Shadow midrange decks, in which case I would suggest a different deck.
Praxis Sentinels (Decklist by noverb)
Rakano Sentinels (Decklist by stormguard798)
Unified Notes: No new Sentinels are available in the new set, but Sentinels remain a great way to smack your opponents upside for a lot of damage. I deliberately chose not to include
Scythe Slash due to the overlap with the other Fire Aggro decks, though they’d be great in conjunction with
Tempered Sentinel. The biggest concern is
Autotread: whatever Fire Aggro deck you end up playing needs to be packing the full playset to get past the pesky
Vine Grafter - otherwise, that card alone could stonewall your entire strategy. And with
Autotread being a Sentinel, it’s an absolutely must-have for this archetype.
Dredge (Decklist by noverb)
Dredge (Decklist by stormguard798)
Individual Card Discussion: One very key difference between my version and noverb’s is that there are no main deck non-unit cards. This way, you can completely maximise your chances of flipping over units for the likes of
Shoaldredger or
Umbren Deathwatcher. There are unfortunately no sacrifice outlets for
Faceless One, but I’ve found it to be fine regardless. Free cards are free, after all.
While
Send a Message is a really powerful card, this deck is so power hungry that you rarely get to play it whenever you flip it over. There also isn’t a lot of controlled Discard in this deck, so it’s harder to dictate if/when you Send your Messages.
Haunting Scream is also quite strong, but with the by-far best target for it,
Dark Purveyor, being banned in the format, Scream has generally been pretty underwhelming for me.
I stole the
Pteriax Mount tech from LordPerth, and it has been doing wonders for closing out the game.What’s better than a giant Flying unit?
Unified Notes: We once again come back to the issue of
Vine Grafter - honestly, if you aren’t running the full 4-of across your team, you’re making a mistake. However, there are some deck combinations that do want to split up their
Victimless Crime and Grafter, so if say your teammate is on PSx Control, this archetype is certainly an option to consider.
Combrei Aggro Dr Pringles' decklist
Combrei Aggro (Decklist by stormguard798)
New cards: Rune of Law,
Find The Moment,
Tower Inspector,
Ursa Squadron,
Skysweeper,
Gavel's Insight
Individual Card Discussion: Nothing really new here. I like the
Alchemy Student as a way to potentially race the Fire Aggro decks since a few hits with a big Lifesteal unit could easily put the game out of reach for them. Other than that,
Rune of Law gets the thumbs-up from me over Crownwatch Standard since it is potentially undepleted power. One other consideration could be
Brigade Hall to dump power into if the game goes long, but you’re hoping that doesn’t happen.
Unified Notes: The point of conflict here is with the pump spells - because the non-Fire Aggro decks don’t have the reach with burn spells to close out the game, most of them heavily rely on pump spells to do so, namely
Finest Hour and
Martial Efficiency. Consequently, I’d advise not running this archetype in the same line-up as Valkyries or Soldiers.
Hooru Curse Control
New Cards: Bottled Insight,
Obstructive Flicker,
Disarm
With a slew of card draw and removal spells, Curse Control has always waded just outside of top tiers. The upside to playing a deck like this is that it generally has game against everything. However the deck lacks win-cons and the win-con it does have gets removed by attachment removal.
Argenport Valkyries (Decklist by Applechips)
New Cards: Access to
Watchwing Support.
Brigade Hall,
Collapse,
Victimless Crime,
Argenport Blueprints,
Rune of Illusion
Deck Overview: This is a deck with two major themes: Valkwarp and Attachments. Valkwarp is a mechanic on various cards that gain the warp (playable on top of your deck) ability if you have a Valkyrie in play. These cards also grant you a bonus effect when you warp them, which means when you do so you not only get card advantage but also a meaningful tempo advantage. The secondary theme of the deck, Attachments, makes use of
Watchwing Support which buffs the top unit or weapon of your deck by +2/+2 each time you play an attachment (including itself). As a result you incidentally generate massive units that you can recur for massive value. The deck is a tempo strategy at heart with a grindy card advantage axis to it as well.
Individual Card Discussion: There are several valkyries and attachments to support its major themes that synergize in unique ways. For example,
Beastcaller's Amulet is an attachment that plays an overstatted unit for its cost. However, you need to hit your opponent with a unit in order to trigger it. In this deck, that need is easily met as we play many cheap flyers.
Brigade Hall, another attachment, summons a unit and gives access to a potent power sink in the mid-to-late game.
A more interesting and explosive combination is that between
Martial Efficiency and
Watchwing Support.
Martial Efficiency can play multiple curses which happen to be attachments which means you can buff the top unit of your deck quite, well, ... efficiently! Even more impressive than that is when you play a deadly relic weapon with
Raildriver Valkyrie.
Raildriver Valkyrie plays a Snipe spell that deals one damage as an ultimate when you play an attachment. Normally it's a pretty minor effect but when you have a deadly relic weapon your spells also have deadly and suddenly your
Snipe is now a nearly universal kill spell for units. The final major synergy is between
Deathwing and
Silver Slicer. If you warp
Deathwing and
Silver Slicer receives the deadly-lifesteal buff and you warp it as well then it will have the incredible battle skill combo of deadly and quickdraw. This means that it will be able to kill any unit you attack with it. This is a rare combination that you have little to no control over setting up but when it happens it leads to an insurmountable advantage that many decks cannot overcome.
Rat Relics (Decklist by noverb)
Relics (Decklist by stormguard798)
New Cards: Victimless Crime,
Behold the Truth
Individual Card Discussion: The only card the Rat version got was
Behold the Truth over
Pack Hunt, which was an insane upgrade. In general the deck still functions erratically and has game against everything due to attacking on different fronts. The deck plays like a Rube Goldberg machine and that speaks to certain people.
stormguard798: While still Knowledge-based, my version of the deck leans more defensive and focuses on eking out as much value from the 3-cost Entomb relics as possible, as opposed to trying to kill with Rats. This I found to be a little more focused than divvying up the deck’s focus between opposing strategies, whilst also allowing you to drop the F splash. Unfortunately, the deck didn’t really pick up anything new from the recent sets other than possibly some removal, but still packs a punch.
Unified Notes:
Other than potentially the removal, since this deck is so synergy based, there is very little overlap with any other archetype. Since the unified restriction only applies to non-power cards, this could be a very interesting 3rd deck if you’re struggling to bridge the gap across your team.
Oni Weapons (Decklist by noverb)
New Cards: Shiftstone Sniper,
Inoa's Fury
This deck is untested, but the shell has been knocking around in my head since the first primer. This is largely an aggro deck with a long game strategy with
Oni Quartermaster. On top of there being many Oni that now come with their own weapons, many weapons now also replace themselves. This diminished the inherent disadvantage from playing many weapons. This is, however, a matter of personal preference as I’m not sure this is better than any mono fire list.
Skycrag Grenadins (Decklist by noverb)
New Cards: Dangerbot,
Scrapmetal Fury,
Grenadin Rescue
This is a deck I made for the last Primer that didn’t see much love, but is a really cool concept. The deck is capable of some explosive starts with
Beacon of War but can also play the grindy control deck with
Disassembler. There is a deck for
Dangerbot out there, but I still don’t think this is it. However the deck will gladly pick up a
Grenadin Rescue to go wide immediately instead of
Spark Hatcher. There is a version of this deck that plays Shadow to dive into
Display of Menace (one of the most powerful cards of the format) but it messes with the power a lot, so do so at your own risk.
Unified Notes: While the deck doesn’t mind losing out on
Torch, it does showcase the same Carver core that most fire decks do, so this deck competes for that slot on your lineup. I think the deck falls apart when you remove
Gleaming Grenadin,
Kindling Carver, and
Grenadin Drone.
FPS Beacon (Decklist by LordPerth)
New cards: Glen Pathcutter,
Pteriax Mount,
Warning Shot,
Battlefront Dasher,
Draconic Looting,
Cyber Skimmer,
Call The Hit
Individual Card Discussion: This is a slightly different take on a list that Batteriez played in a set 10 Peasant tournament. I went with an even lower curve and
Draconic Looting to take advantage of that. All the cheap 1 drops work well with Looting, as do the fate cards. The discard synergy also helps with looting and allows to cheat on power early.
Shoaldredger complements the discard synergy as a great top end and works well with
Pteriax Mount.
Call The Hit is a nice new card that answers
Vine Grafter while also being another power. I excluded
Vine Grafter because I don’t think that this deck needs it too much while a lot of other decks do.
[noverb] I’m actually in the opposite camp on
Lumen Shepherd. It allows banners to be a turn one play which is huge. It also more consistently let’s you power out a
Gustrider Onslaught. I’d trim the
Jotun Hurlers to play four Shepherds.
[LordPerth] I can see that,
Kindling Carver sometimes didn’t feel that great, but the additional units from
Lumen Shepherd could help with that and you are right in that it helps to make your first few turns more explosive. I will change it to 4 Shepherd and 1
Jotun Hurler for now.
Unified Notes: This deck has some overlap with fire aggro decks (Autotread and
Grenadin Drone), sacrifice decks (
Kindling Carver and
Grenadin Drone) and Dredge decks (
Gustrider,
Shoaldredger) that are pretty difficult to resolve, so it's probably best to not play this list with any of those decks in your line-up. However, overlapping
Jotun Hurlers or
Call The Hits can be resolved. Hurler can be replaced by another unit like
Battlefront Dasher.
Warning Shot and
Call The Hit could be replaced by other cheap removal, such as
Torch or
Permafrost. And lastly
Darkwater Vines has to go if you want to have Mandrakes in the line-up because it is more important there, but it will hurt this deck quite a bit. The best replacement would be another 1 drop: some options include
Battlefront Dasher,
Cyber Skimmer and
Spitefeeder.
Toxic Wisp is also an interesting option for the deck because of its combination with
Autotread.
Stonescar Dragons (Decklist by EarthsOverseer)
New Cards: Autotread,
Stonescar Blueprints,
Stonebreaker Bow,
Rune of Illusion
Individual Card Discussion: Unfortunately, Dragons have not received much in set 12 besides
Stonebreaker Bow. The gameplan for this deck is to get on the board early and press your advantage by removing blockers with removal or
Dread Hellkite.
Unified Notes: There are a lot of staples here like
Torch and
Annihilate which can be swapped for similar cards in case you need them for other decks. Consider cards like moving
Sear to the maindeck or
Searing Fist.
New Archetypes
Oni Forgesmith Armory
Oni Forgesmith is an exciting engine for armory style decks that let you go big with
Detonation Cannon or
Stonebreaker Bow in what could almost be considered a combo deck. Below are a few decks that stormguard and noverb brewed up around the smith.
FJS Armory (Deck by stormguard798)
FJS Midrange (Deck by stormguard798)
Stonescar Armory (Decklist by noverb)
Individual Card Discussion: I feel like
Bladecrafter is just a must have in Armory style decks. Being able to block on the ground while also tutoring for your weapon of choice is fantastic. Staying just two factions removes some power and synergy at the benefit of a better powerbase. Cards like
Zido, Cabal Housecat and
Feartracker are more generic midrange cards but still good for controlling the game until we get to our combo.
Eavesdrop is a very solid answer to reanimator strategies like Mandrakes and Dredge while also being a solid card disadvantage option or extra power.
stormguard798: So I ended up putting together 2 different variants of FJS decks built around
Stonebreaker Bow and
Oni Forgesmith. The first is a much more Relic Weapon focused deck, relying on
Watchwing Support and
Oni Quartermaster to chain together huge relic weapons every turn while keeping the board clear. The other is a more generic midrange deck focused on accruing incidental value. By adding Justice, you get access to
Slay, which is a fantastic removal spell, and
Wanted Poster, which works extremely well with the overall strategy of trading 1-for-1. The influence requirements for the deck are pretty light with only the Forgesmith requiring double Fire influence, so going 3 factions is fairly manageable.
Unified Notes: Torch and
Victimless Crime are the standouts that are going to cause some difficulties fitting this into your unified lineup. However these are just removal spells and thankfully, a lot of good removal exists in the format. As it stands the deck has no overlaps with Mandrakes in terms of removal, so you can look at that deck for good comparisons for removal. Otherwise the overlaps are mostly Shadow midrange cards and you should probably look to replace one of those decks in your lineup as there isn’t much way around needing 8
Feartrackers for example.
Behold The Truth (Decklist by LordPerth)
New cards: Marisen's Legacy,
Kickflip Monk
I decided to go for a Mono Time version to gain the advantage of Etchings + power dorks and
Prism Golem (although Golem didn't feel as great in this deck compared to other peasant mono faction decks) . This deck aims to play ramp units early to be able to play its 5-7 power payoff cards, most importantly the finisher
Behold the Truth, a few turns earlier than usual.
Individual Card Discussion: For the ramp dorks I prioritised cheap over expensive, strength over no strength(because of
Amber Coin) and more health over less in this order, which is definitely debatable (I can see arguments for
High Prophet of Sol and
Open Way Supplier).
Kickflip Monk is a nice flexible card that blocks well early, can act as a power if needed and the hate text can be useful in this format (although keep in mind that it negates your
Turn Back Time).
Marisen's Legacy is really great in this deck,
Nahid's Distillation and
Horn of Plenty are slightly worse, but are the next best options in terms of payoffs for going wide and/or ramping.
Twinbrood Sauropod and
Horn of Plenty can also switch places between the market and main deck. I tried both variants and they felt equally effective.
Behold the Truth is the primary win-condition and can be brought back with
Turn Back Time. I could see this deck struggling against control (board wipes, negates, efficient removal) and decks that require interaction (like big units with evasion).
Unified Notes: This deck should fit well into most line-ups because most of its cards have functional replacements e.g. if one of your other decks wants ramp-dorks too you can change them around pretty freely.
Speed Grafter and
Time Etchings are really important for this deck, so if you have something like Xenan Mandrakes in your line-up they would have to resort to only
Vine Grafter. I could see playing fewer copies of
Nahid's Distillation if another deck wants to play 1 or 2, but the card is really good in this list.
Ancient Lore,
Infused Guardian and Amaran Archeologist are reasonable replacements. If you have another mono faction deck in your line-up you can give up
Prism Golem because this list doesn’t need it too much.
Seasoned Spelunker is a solid replacement, but you could also just try to play more ramp dorks instead.
Desert Alchemist can be replaced with
Scorpion Wasp and
Goliath Flytrap with
Rectifier or another cheap ramp unit if necessary.
Hooru Control (Decklist by stormguard798)
New Cards: Bottled Insight,
Obstructive Flicker,
Trick Throw,
Disarm
Individual Card Discussion: Now that we finally have 3 uncommon board wipes, it might finally be time for Control to take center stage. I elected to try out
Disarm as a new catch-all removal spell, but if you’re expecting a lot of heavy hitters, the newly buffed
Eilyn's Choice as well as the reverted-to-original
Vanquish could prove to be more proactive and efficient answers instead.
[noverb] Personally, I think I would run two
Obstructive Flicker over
Stormblast. A lot of the spells that are worth countering in this format are slow. You will likely get more use out of a small sweeper than a situational four damage. Similarly I’m unsure about Cover From The Storm in the main and
Lightning Storm in the market. Worth thinking about switching the two spots depending on what you expect to run into.
Argenport Discard (Decklist by stormguard798)
New cards: Awakening,
Recruitment Effort,
Skysweeper,
Inquisitive Alchemist,
Glen Pathcutter,
Soil Renewal,
Ransack,
Send a Message,
Collapse,
D'Angolo Racketeers
Individual Card Discussion: This is essentially a slower, grindier version of the Feln Dredge version of the deck - instead of dumping a whole lot of cards in your void as once, it’s much more incidental and deliberate. Consequently, you’re able to run more effects that actually require you to pay power, like
D'Angolo Racketeers or
Send a Message.
Soil Renewal is a fine way to get some incidental Discard, but unless you have some way of taking advantage of the relic side of it, it doesn’t provide enough value. Ditto with
Recruitment Effort: without a sacrifice outlet, a single, big unit is rather mediocre.
Argenport Midrange (Decklist by LordPerth)
New cards: Unseen Marksman,
Ursa Squadron,
Argenport Blueprints,
Call The Hit,
Victimless Crime,
D'Angolo Might,
Rune of Illusion,
Collapse,
Alchemy Student,
Brigade Hall,
Curfew Patrol,
Offbook Officer,
Eavesdrop
This is a pretty straightforward midrange deck with a curve of stand-alone good units from 2 to 5 (with a notable lack of 4 drops, because I couldn’t find any that I like enough), some efficient removal, reach and card draw.
Individual Card Discussion: Ursa Squadron is a nice proactive 2 drop that can attack into most early game units in this format, even
Vine Grafter, and the buff synergises well with a lot of our units. Unfortunately, it also dies pretty easily.
Nectar of Unlife is a decent early removal spell with upside against decks with void recursion or in matchups that can go on longer, but it's not incredibly efficient at any stage of the game.
Kosul Battlemage worked well so far, but the stats aren’t great and I don’t think this deck wants battle tricks, which are usually the cards that make Battlemage shine.
Throne Warden is mostly there to have another 5 drop that can stabilise and that works well with
D'Angolo Might, but the low stats can be awkward. And lastly
D'Angolo Might: The deck has 12 units that draw 4 or more with it and 8 of them have aegis, which makes it pretty consistent, but I am still not sure if this deck really wants it. Alternatively you could either lower the curve or play
Backbreaker in the maindeck instead.
Collapse in the market should maybe be
Slay, but I like the additional flexibility.
Unified Notes: This deck clashes a lot with other shadow midrange decks, like Xenan Mandrakes, and I think it’s too difficult to replace the cards that you would have to give up if you want to take both, so I would advise to only run one of them. This is especially true for other Argenport decks, but also for anything that heavily relies on either
Vine Grafter or
Feartracker, because both of those cards are really important for this deck.
Ursa Squadron can be replaced with
Crownwatch Paladin,
Toxic Wisp or
Alchemy Student.
Hooru OTK (Decklist by noverb)
New Cards: Stormhalt Concoction,
Bless the Wild,
Find The Moment,
Steel Golem
This is a deck that I was knocking around in my head for a long time. Unsure if this is the correct unit/spell split. The idea is to give
Steel Golem and
Willbreaker extra power, berserk, and flying in order to kill the opponent in one combat.
Terrazon Echo does a nice impression of Double Damage by increasing its attack with each swing. There’s also a suite of removal counters in
Parul's Choice and
Bless the Wild. I would not fault you for running
Bubble Shield instead of Bless, though. There’s a possible version of this that runs
Reweave +
Trickshot Ruffian for lethal out of nowhere but that’s a bit more restrictive on the power and not always usable.
Market: I decided to go for double counterspell in
Obstructive Flicker and
Backlash. I was coin-flipping on
Savage Denial vs
Backlash because there will be those times where you are tight on power and you just want to grab that one cost answer to their removal. Flicker serves a double purpose of answering their bomb spells and answering their board of X-1s (looking at you Aggrocoaster).
Stormhalt Concoction could be Death From Above but I feel like more often than not you will be grabbing it to target the
Rage Grafter itself, so Concoction seems better.
Thunderbird is your nice go-to second threat, a 2/2 isn’t much but it has all the keywords you want.
Remembering the Relics (Decklist by imestr8)
Individual Card Discussion: The key card to this deck is
Auric Reclaimer. The effect is certainly strong enough when you pay 6 power for a big weapon, but the deck tries to get even more out of it. With cards like
Reweave and
Remembrance, you are able to get
Auric Reclaimer’s effect for a much lower cost.
Unified Notes: The card in this deck that has the highest chance of overlapping with a teammate’s deck would be [VineGrafter], though it’s definitely not necessary for this deck to function. I think the best replacement would be a unit that discards cards from your hand or deck, so that it compliments the strategy of the deck.
Market: With the format being team unified, the market was omitted due to how common
Vine Grafter is amongst decks. If you do want to have a market for the deck, then I think
Vine Grafter is the way to go. I would opt for some key market options that help against the weaker matchups for the deck, like go wide strategies.
Concluding Notes
Can’t wait to dip your toes into the format? The Team-Not-Tavrod folks are hosting an asynchronous Peasant tournament from December 8th to December 12th. Signups for that event are over here:
https://battlefy.com/team-not-tavrod/tnt-throwdown-2021-21-peasant/61a78602a9b2204841bb6787/info
Thank you very, very much to everyone who contributed to this Community Primer:
noverb
EarthsOverseer
LordPerth
imestr8
Applechips
See you all on December 11th!
