Maelstrom Control

Hey, I'm jordanyano and I've been playing Eternal since April 2017. I've ended multiple season in master and love the intricacies that set 2 has brought to the game. For months I've been tinkering with the idea of Skycrag Control, often trying to use Calradean Cradle as the finisher. This works occasionally, but is unreliable and the clunky 4 mana do nothing relic is often too slow and too much of a tempo loss to play.

Recently I have been brewing a much jankier Skycrag Control deck that has been having mediocre success in the casual play mode -- in fact it has had enough success that I decided to create a Reddit to share about it. I'm not going to lie -- this is not a competitive deck. I've played many games with it in ranked, and have only won games where my opponent has misplayed into a storm or been screwed long enough to let me pull ahead. Here's

The biggest appeal of this deck is the vast number of decisions it gives you through cards such as Rain of Frogs and Unexpected Results, while also allowing much of your removal being at instant speed.

The namesake card, Maelstrom Bell is allows many cards that would be otherwise unplayable (Icequake being the most obvious) to be some of the stronger cards in this deck. Other cards such as Piercing Shot, Lightning Storm and Rock Slide greatly benefit from ringing the bell, becoming powerful burn spells that can help remove most meta creatures. Polymorph is played as a 4 of due to it being our best card against the angry cow and the dirt titan. We also run Channel as a 4 of (which may be incorrect) as our primary wincon as well as a good removal spell that draws more gas.

Staff of Stories is one of the more difficult cards in this deck, as having it stick has won many games, but in other games it has been a 5 'mana cantrip. I am convinced it is good here, but without any blockers, it is a dangerous card to play without lots set up.

As for matchups, this deck has its good and its bad matchups. Aggro is our most consistently good matchup, with our removal suite matching up very favorably. We have a total of 7 soft sweepers that come online with the help of the bell, and these are our main out to Aggro, as well has many midranged strategies. Against midranged decks, polymorph and a good rain of frogs can allow us to pull ahead, but otherwise it's usually up to the draw. Most control decks, with the exception of chalice are pretty good for us. We have tons of aegis poppers for their threats, and they usually give us time to develop the bell and to channel their face. Also, their removal spells are useless against us, so we have a natural card advantage against any deck that runs removal due to removal being dead against us. Chalice tends to be a very difficult matchup as they can out value and out race us on board. Against armory we tend to be favored as much of our removal doubles as relic weapon removal as well.

With set three coming soon, there are a few obvious improvements that it could bring. Icequake seems like a necessary bad card. If set three brings some sort of blue or red sweeper, that could drastically improve this deck. I've tried splashing justice for harsh rule and vanquish, but the inconsistency it brings wrecks the whole game plan.

Thanks so much for reading, and I'm sort if I wrote something wrong, it's late and I'm just typing on my phone. Please give me your ideas if I missed anything, or if you have any questions. Last thing -- this is a bad and difficult deck to play and I have lost many games learning its ins and out. Do not try this if you want to rank up fast or consistently.