Rift's Edge Control (w/ guide and update)

Hello! I played this deck today for all of my stream and it worked great. Feels like a 75% win rate or so.

The idea of course is to protect Rift's Edge with Aegis and survive long enough to proc it until your cards are free/huge/lethal.

If the deck gets 5 upvotes, I'll do a full write up with matchups, strategy, what-not, what-have-you, etc.

I hope you enjoy playing it as much as I did today!

Something about an 11 double damage Solfire off the top that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Thanks for checking it out!

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STRATEGY GUIDE


INTRODUCTION

First of all, thank you all for the feedback and likes! I'll do my best to tell you what I know about playing this deck. Let's start with the deck update that goes with this post. The biggest problem I've run into (aside from certain matchups, which I'll get into shortly), is the lack of power and getting stuck on 3 or 4. So, I adjusted the numbers to try and smooth out the draws and so far it's working better. To be clear, I played the original version deck on stream for 8+ hours at an approximate W/R of 75% from somwhere in gold to somewhere in blue (sorry I can't remember exactly). I'm sure part of this was luck, but a lot of it was certainly a combination of general strategy, mulligan decisions, matchup decisions, and gameplay decisions. Let's start with the first.

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GENERAL STRATEGY

This is a "survive until you do the thing" deck, and one that is difficult to play. The simple version of how to play has already been stated -- Survive, gain aegis, play Rift's Edge, survive some more, draw cards, kill them in one or two turns. Depending on the matchup, you may need to aggressively draw, or aggressively kill things. Using your life total as a resource is very important with this deck. I cannot overstate how important this is! It's really important. Like, super important. Okay, I guess I can overstate it. My bad.

Sometimes you can afford to take a large amount of damage as you get things set up. Other times, you need to keep your life total as high as possible throughout the early turns. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of hard board removal, so it's important to leverage your removal options carefully.

Removal

Timing your removal and leveraging the board leaves little room for error in a format full of powerful units and effects. One wrong decision and things can turn south pretty quickly! The most important removal card is of course Heavy Hail. In general, you're looking for a three for one or better before using it. But like, when exactly should you play it? What should you discard? What's your next turn gonna look like? Can you ignore the board and draw cards instead? So many decisions revolving around this card have to do with matchup. Sometimes you need to fire it off early, other times you need to wait until it devastates your opponent. Or, if you're lucky, you can wait on this card until you've drawn it after a few Rift's Edge procs.

Lightning Strike is pretty self-explanatory, but again, depending on the matchup (sorry, gonna use this phrase a lot because it's the key to playing this deck well), you might need to save it for a weapon, use it on a ramp guy, or discard it to Catalyze. Fun side note, I once did 24 damage to face with strike when my opponent attacked me with a weapon. That was fun.

Solfire is very similar in use, but with the very important bonus of going face. It's our primary win condition and benefits the most from edge procs. Display of Survival is a flexible and very important card to all matchups. Sometimes, you need it to deal with annoything threats like Riftfeeder Wasp, other times, you need it to protect your hand, board, or edge via aegis. Yet other times, you really want to hold it up to clear their next threat(s) with the "5 (or more) damage to each unit played this turn".

Enormous Anura is another flexible card. I prefer to use it to maintain aegis, but popping unit-aegis or removing a ramper are also solid options. Every once and a while you'll even draw him with double damage off of catalyze. That's nice and all, sometimes even clutch, but not usually very important. As for market removal cards, Oxidize helps deal with weapons, while Lethrai Marauder is a flexible card for dealing with annoying relics or killer-ing something like Lipa, Witch of the Woods.

All this said, if you think your life total can support it, I highly recommend ignoring the board in favor of drawing cards.

Card Draw

At the heart of control lies card draw and it's very important here too. Unless I'm under extreme pressure, I will always prioritize draw. Doing so gives you more options for future turns, helps you find key removal, and allows you to keep hitting power drops. Once edge procs three times, you get to draw with catalyze and wisdom of the elders for free. Free card draw is nice. Add another edge proc and Surveying the Rift also becomes free. Drawing four cards for free is sweet. You heard it here first.

Units

We started with 11 units. I thought that was way too many, so I cut a Skycrag Adept in favor of a sigil. Speaking of Adept, she's great at getting back important removal and burn cards later in the game. Her spell buffing ability can also be great, but usually isn't that important. Drawing her post edge procs is a nice way to put a threat on board as well.

As stated before, Enormous Anura is a flexible toad and one that I prefer to use to maintain aegis. Having aegis means that Rift's Edge is hard to remove or that I can draw two cards with Fisher King. Both of these units can benefit from edge procs as well, but not as important. That said, I've certainly won games by clearing the board and attacking with toads (big or small).

Arguably, the most important unit is Mistveil Drake. He gives us aegis and gets buffed as a reward for us having aegis when played. In general, I'd much prefer to hold up Wilderness Delivery to protect my edge, board, or hand than to just fire it off (though I will do that sometimes). Using delivery in response to hand disruption or someone trying to remove Rift's Edge is amazing, as not only do you stop the effect with aegis, you get aegis again when you draw drake again. A fun synergy to have is firing off catyalyze just after drake goes to back into the deck and giving it double damage. Then you have a hard to kill 6/6 double damage flier, which has won me a ton of games.

Win Condition

I'd love to say that we have plenty, but of course, I'd be lying. Solfire is the main win con, followed by Tomb of the Azuremage, followed by Mistveil Drake, followed by buffed units. But the most important and perhaps undervalued win-con is your opponent's conceding to edge going unchecked or simply getting outvalued.

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MATCHUPS

In the early ranks, it's difficult to talk about matchups. As of writing this, I'm still not sure that there's even a clearly defined meta. That said, I'll do my best to breakdown and simplify my approach to matchups, not getting bogged down with particular decks or archetypes.

SUPER AGRRO

I'm referring to early board flood/super cheap aggressive unit style decks. This is a very polarizing matchup. It's pretty much as simple as, do we have heavy hail? If yes, we often win. If no, we often lose. Even still, you have to time Heavy Hail perfectly. Can you wait another turn? What kind of threats remain from your opponent? Can you afford to draw instead? Important questions to answer correctly. If you're seeing a ton of this on the ladder, I'd recommend tuning the deck to perhaps include some more AOE board clears, either in the main or market. Of course, once you stabilize, the game gets a lot easier. Even still, protecting your life total is priority number one. Drawing cards or playing edge aren't as important in the early to middle game. Note that Enormous Anura is a great unit to have in this matchup, mostly for it's damage ability and 3/5 body. Dat toad booty be boomin. Proabaly a 50/50 matchup, depending on how good you are at having Heavy Hail when you need it. This is where knowing your opponent's stylistic tendencies can help guide your mulligan decisions.

AGGRO

I'd classify aggro as decks that aren't flooding the board early, but looking to curve out with aggressive cards. I think this matchup is a bit more forgiving and less polarizing. You often have a bit more time to get things set up and spot removal with cards like lighting strike and solfire, both of which can sometimes be enough to keep threats at bay. In general, I tend to draw cards more against aggro to both set up higher value board clears and make sure I keep dropping power. I think Rift's Edge becomes more important as a way to eventually stabilize and turn the corner. This is matchup is proabaly closer to 60/40.

WEAPONS

Gonna give weapon decks its own section. Specifically, Rakano and decks with Ossuar Longbow. This is by far the hardest matchup. I think this is due to the diversity of attack angles. You can put longbow on face or a unit (versatile, isn't it?). That means units can be out of reach of spot removal/board clears, or you need to be able to kill both units and weapons. That can be tricky if not downright impossible. Either way, you need to draw amazingly to win this one. Note that Oxidize can help more than usual in this matchup. Approximately 20/80.

MIDRANGE/RAMP

I'm lumping in all sorts of decks here, but stuff like The Creation Project, Hooru hunt, or decks that play Riftfeeder Wasp. This is also a bit of a polarizing matchup, but not nearly as polarizing as the super aggro matchup. I think with good resource management, we're slightly favored. It all comes down to having specific answers for specific things at specific times. When you have them, things get a bit easier, when you don't, you can get into trouble. I prioritize card draw and getting edge down as soon as possible. Both of these help give you more options later in the game. Sometimes, the only way to beat large things is with buffed removal and lots of cheap card draw. Gonna give this one a 60/40 overall. But depending on how good you are at 'having it', this can turn into an 80/20 for us.

CONTROL

Finally, a good matchup. Specifically, I'm talking about Hooru control, but removal-heavy decks can fall in this category as well. Many of their cards are simply dead against us. They often lack the ability to proc aegis or drop early threats and that gives us plenty of time to draw cards and set up/protect edge. These are the matchups that you get to play 12 double damage solfires and shit. Good times. 80/20.

BURN

I think I played against a burn deck one time. I lost and have since moved on. But in general, I think we should be favored here, thanks to aegis. Not sure if this is even worth mentioning. But I did, so there you go. Not enough data to surmise the matchup quality.

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MULLIGANS

In general, knowing nothing about my opponent, I will prioritize a hand with Heavy Hail, and at least 3 power if possible. If I had to pick a 'perfect hand' it might be something like 3 power, Eilyn's Favor, Heavy Hail, Enormous Anura, and either Catalyze, Wisdom, or Edge. I don't like having Surveying the Rift early, since I want to drop power for the first 5 turns and vastly prefer playing it once edge has proc'd a few times. Something like 3 power, lighting strike, solfire, edge, and wilderness delivery is serviceable, but is more likely to lead to a loss than a win against the average deck.

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CONCLUSION

Rift's Edge Control is hard to play. Every decision is difficult and critical. BUT, if you live long enough to live the dream, you're most likely going to enjoy it.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

Good luck out there!

- Bettorup