Optimus Prime

Is Align the Tesseract still viable in 2024? Who the heck knows, sometimes you just have to mix things up a bit. Here's my take on it.

Tesseract is really a card that's made to work with Wilderness Delivery, thanks to its cost reduction effect. So that's the starting point: market Tesseract and make it really accessible with delivery and Howling Peak Smuggler, the latter of which also gives your damage spells a nice boost. We run a pretty standard Grenadin package, no new ideas here. As always, Sparking Vermin is great since it gives you an immediate trigger when sacc'ed with Align. Grenahen can get you a Smuggler if you're looking for market access, and Scrounger is our go-to recycler and another nifty damage boost. Grenadin Rescue is both damage and a bunch of Grenadin, and Assembly Line is even more of the little guys.

Other Fun Stuff:

Direwood Pack: This is sort of a backup win-con/big damage slot. It benefits from sacrificing Grenadin, using them as chump blockers, and powers up when you kill stuff with your damage spells. Aegis, Deadly, and constantly growing attack. And on top of that, he has inscribe to help us hit our influence for Align! What more could you ask for? Costing 3, I guess, but then he'd be worse than Riftfeeder Wasp.

Serpent Hive: we can use this to lift a big wolf or Tesseract Prime over blockers for a big swing, but most of the time it's another source of Primal that also deals damage at no cost! A useful card in hand when you've marketed to get Tesseract and have no power left to cast a damage spell, so you're guaranteed at least two cards.

Trick Throw and Icy Scrying: these two cards are workhorses, dealing damage and drawing you cards respectively while transforming stuff you don't need into more pings for Tesseract! I say pings, but with a merchant on board these can lead to takedowns very quickly. Scrying is another reason I went back to this deck, the Community Bundle is awesome!

Edge of Uprising: Our last somewhat odd choice (although maybe this is known tech already, I don't know). This is a great alternative to Align the Tesseract against control decks that wipe the board and can therefore clear our Tesseract Prime very quickly. This also takes advantage of our damage spells to help us draw, albeit after discarding. The way Eternal seems to order card effects is that the last on the board activates first. So if you play Edge first thanks to all the small Grenadin on the field, then sacrifice them to get Tesseract Prime, every damage spell essentially becomes "draw 3, discard 1". This line can come up if you want to stay wide for awhile and swing at your opponent

Standard Plays and Notes

If Tesseract Prime ever dies, we have Re-read serving as Align the Tesseract number two. If that one dies, Edge of Uprising. If that dies, we're relying on wolves. If those die, there's a button to concede.

When it comes to damage spells, face is not always the place. Against decks that get rid of units fast, it's probably best to think of yourself as a burn deck; we've got plenty of tools to chip away at the opponent's life. But if your opponent is playing midrange or gets value out of monsters, feel free to use spells to get them off the board as fast as possible. As long as Prime sticks around, you will outvalue the other person. Decay on the spells also breaks units into bite-sized pieces for Edge of Uprising

Remember that Beaker Blast gets really strong really quickly when you have the influence and a Smuggler or Downdark Scrounger in play. Since it's fast, you can even swing with Scrounger to give it more juice, then trigger it.

This deck's worst nightmare might be Rancher's Ruin, of all things. We fill our void fast, have one monster we really care about, and have a spell we would like to not have banished from the game. It seems to be a niche choice in Feln, but important to know. Devour in general can throw a wrench in the whole "get Align back" thing

Any matchup where the opponent has Primal influence is one where we need to be careful about going wide, since they have tons of cheap damage boardwipes like Trials and Tribulations, Heavy Hail, Hailstorm, Display of Survival, ... you get the picture. Try to make going wide and getting Align happen as close together as possible. Unless they transform it, decks that do damage for removal are going to struggle against Tesseract Prime once you've got it, so make sure you get it.

Against decks with kills for boardwipes (the Kerendon colors, generally) you have to expect that Tesseract Prime isn't going to last more than 2 turns (especially if they've hit 4 power, which is when Nothing Remains comes online), and frankly it has a pretty good chance of not even lasting 1. Here, it's better to go wide, get Edge, and maybe just use Align the Tesseract in one huge turn where you draw a bunch of cards off damage spells to get some value. Pack is your friend, because the first boardwipe just make them bigger.

Aggro is generally a pretty good matchup. Unlike most combo decks, we're not sitting there defenseless while they build up. You can always trade or ping units as appropriate, and one big Direwood Pack is usually too hot to handle. Tesseract certainly is.