Pearly Flights

Are you looking for a deck that is underplayed, can surprise people with cards they don't expect, and has a good matchup against top decks like Elysian Midrange, Praxis Midrange, and Chalice Control? Look no further!

This deck is based off of a deck by Sir Rhino, Pearlescent Hooru, with some of my own modifications. The game plan is to overwhelm the opponent in the air with large fliers like Shelterwing Rider and Pearlescent Drake. Let's go over the cards:

Units

Eager Owlet Easy to activate in this deck. A 3/3 flier that comes down on turn 2 and often deals a surprising amount of damage. Also a solid blocker.

Tinker Overseer We don't need the extra stats from relics, a 2/2 flier is good enough. I'm running the full playset instead of more Kothons to maximize flying synergy with cards like Eager Owlet and Aerialist Trainer.

Whispering Wind An amazing card if you can repeatedly activate it, this deck is the best home I've found for it yet. For most of my time on ladder I was running 4 copies without regrets, I would go back up to 4 if you're not seeing lots of aggro.

Kothon, The Far-Watcher Good early and good late, I really just have Kothon here as an extra body to fill in my unit count. I had 0 for a while until I started seeing lots of Oni Ronin.

Aerialist Trainer Card advantage and a good blocker on the ground. Fits nicely into this deck.

Valkyrie Enforcer The bread and butter Justice 3 drop. Good summon effect, good flying body.

Shelterwing Rider 5 attack in the air on turn 4 is a must answer threat, and although it is easy to answer, it still leaves behind a 0/4 body that can synergize with Eager Owlet or Aerialist Trainger. Also wears attachments well if you go that route.

Pearlescent Drake Really the main reason to play this deck. If sparked (easy to do in this deck), this card is amazing. Why? 6 is a magic number in some important matchups: cards like Sandstorm Titan or Predatory Carnosaur are outclassed by a 5 drop; Drake forces them to take a turn off attacking since it can block the turn it comes down, and that tempo swing is huge.

Spells

Finest Hour Great tempo play, helps to keep your units alive and eat opposing units.

Protect Another great tempo play. We don't run a huge number of units, so it's important to keep the ones we have alive. Also combos with Shelterwing Rider to make it a threat again.

Permafrost For a long time I didn't have this card in the deck, but brought it in when I started seeing a lot of aggro. The early interaction is important against Skycrag and Stonescar, but this is the first card I would remove against Time based midrange.

Eilyn's Choice Most of my playtime I was running a split of Eilyn's Choice and Vanquish. Vanquish is better against Sandstorm Titan, but Eilyn's Choice gives nice flexibility as a safety net against Harsh Rule, and is also better against Bandit Queen.

Victor's Cry I imagine this will be the most controversial inclusion, but the card has overperformed. +5/+5 is so relevant and nobody sees it coming. Allowing any of your units, even a Whispering Wind, to attack into a Titan or eat a Carnosaur is huge.

Powerbase

I started with 29 power, but decided it wasn't quite enough and this deck really wanted 30, especially since extra power can be discarded to Whispering Wind. For the 30th power I went with:

Privilege of Rank Getting a 2 for 1 is nice, and being able to discard this to Whispering Wind is just amazing. We do want to hit 5 power and this gets us there, not getting Primal influence hasn't been an issue in many of my games.

Exclusions

Hammer of Might I had 3 copies of this card instead of Permafrost for most of my playtime on ladder, and it definitely impressed. There aren't any bad warcry hits and Shelterwing Rider wears it particularly well. I took it out because I wanted more interaction against aggro, but there are definitely some matchups where I want it over permafrost or even Victor's Cry.

Vanquish Most of my games I had a 2 and 2 split of Vanquish and Eilyn's Choice, most recently I cut all the Vanquish in favor of Eilyn's Choice but I'm not sure that's correct.

Matchups

I've tracked 50 games so far, and have a 60% win rate, 30-20. Strong matchup against Time based midrange, I'm 4-2 against Praxis and 3-2 against Elysian. Chalice is tougher since they have so much interaction, but we have a solid gameplan against them, I'm 1-1.

Skycrag and Rally Queen were giving me trouble for a while, but the matchup noticeably improved when I brought in Permafrost and Kothon. There is an Argenport Oathbook deck going around that I haven't beaten, 0-2. Undefeated 3-0 against Rakano.

Control decks are the toughest matchup, I'm 7-6 against control archetypes. Armory and Justice/Primal/Fire control seem like the worst matchups, but we fare well against Feln Control and have a decent game against Chalice.

Record by archetype:

Aggro: 8-6
Midrange: 9-4
Control: 7-6
Other/Unknown: 6-2