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Shrine (guide for gauntlet)

Gauntlet Deck By
Watermelon

+14

Cost Curve

Type

Faction

Information

So let's avoid losing in gauntlet. These are the main challenges we want to address:
1- Power and influence RNG: Just don't play 3 faction decks in gauntlet. It's better for your mental health. Also don't play greedy stuff. Gauntlet is all about tempo and occasional removal for rarely appearing key units.

2- Getting overrun by aggro. Do NOT play weak tempo in the early game. You want to discourage the AI to attack into you until you get your things set up. Blightmoth is a great card. It doesn't matter whether if it's in meta decks of throne, USE THAT SHIT! He turns a lot of problematic aggressive tribal decks into easy preys. All your token stuff works really well at discouraging the AI into attacking. The AI does NOT want to lose its units no matter what (unless it has lethal of course).

3- Flyers: I've grown to hate the whole mechanic. It's just disgusting. Feels like there is nothing you can do but to race them. AND RACE THEM WE WILL! The Shrine really shows itself here. +2 attack and lifesteal lets you win EVERY SINGLE RACE. It doesn't matter what they're doing. The best they can do is stall, and they can't even do that for so long.

4- BIG units. There are a bunch of this guys in gauntlet. And not just big units, even worse are aegis units with a bunch of weapons on them. Also sometimes warcrys can get out of hand. So we want to run a shit ton of deadly units alongside Combust to deal with those.

5- INCONSISTENCY. Can't stress this enough. You must and I repeat MUST be able to assemble your pieces ASAP. We have multiple tactics here: Some (or most?!) Shrine decks run it in the main deck. Fucking why?? I mean sure if you can tutor it out with Calibrate or some shit sure but in Stonescar colors you do NOT want only 4 draws to get your key card that you only need one of. We're running 8 merchants here. Alongside them are a myriad of card draw and filtering to help you get their every single game. (I have a fetish for undepleted power. You can run Crest of Chaos for even more card selection if you want) The good thing about this deck is that the card draw isn't negative tempo. It's a part of you win con. That's just beautiful.

Have suggestions? Ideas? Feed backs? Discussions? Some Stonescar energy you want to share? All comments are appreciated <3

Details

Shiftstone Cost
Does not include campaign cost
27,800

Premium Cost
158,400

Influence Requirements
1 2

Power Sources
20 17 12

Power Calculator
Shiftstoned Icon View Deck on Shiftstoned

Deck Rarities
24 27 15 5

Card Types
28 1 26 0 25

Contains Cards From Campaigns
Jekk's Bounty [Set1001]
Into Shadow [Set1004]
Whispers of the Throne [Set1085]
Shadow of the Spire [Set1087]

Archetype
Aggro Combo

Updated
May 13, 2020

Added
April 27, 2020

Views
4,770

Eternal Version
Shadow of the Spire

BBCode For Comments

Deck URL

Revisions (Since last major patch) May 13, 2020


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Comments

Rxrify Eternal Version: 20.05.12
And of course the card nerfs hit my new favorite deck :'( woulf you still say farming for Kato is worth it or is he performing significantly worse with the changes? Two-Face I kept in the Deck, I feel like he is still ok however frustrating it is to get him removed by stuff like Vara' s favor. Either way still had another 7-0 gauntlet run this morning
Watermelon Eternal Version: 20.05.12
My opinion is the opposite actually: I think two-face isn't good anymore. he dies to vara's favor, snowball, grenadins and other 1 attack creatures while also you can't reserve his shade for an extra turn (which is kind of a big deal, actually) but Kato can perform as intended. His main purpose is giving you 3 sac targets for 2 power, and he didn't change in that regard.
Comment Deleted
Rxrify Eternal Version: 20.05.12
As you are a much more experienced player and the creator of this deck, your opinion concerning this is undoubtedly much more relevant than my own. What would you substitute him for? I don't really see a good corrupted alternative.. For the deadly part direfang spiders or ripknife assassin comes to mind - or more token stuff such as the assembly line
Watermelon Edited Eternal Version: 20.05.12
I'm just a random dude grinding gauntlet my opinion isn't more valuable than anyone else. I myself disenchanted Kato to make some decks I wanted to make for a while so I can't play test the deck myself. I would try running some combination of efficient removal (such as annihilate or open contract) and sac targets (I've edited the deck)
Also I think it's better to run emblems of makkar for the deadly body. The last comment (241akerman) has a better powerbase that utilizes the card.
RumblerX Edited Eternal Version: 20.05.04
By far and away this is the best Gauntlet grinder I've ever used. The ONLY thing I've tweak was the market. Removing last Chance and Induce Madness for Brimstone Altar and Edict of makkar I've found myself in the situation a few times with no way to sacrifice anything and Altar does this rather well. Edict has been an Allstar at getting the last shot in. Or killing Reality Wardens.
khan2k14 Eternal Version: 20.05.04
Hi Watermelon,

thx for sharing your list, yesterday i struggled with my gauntlet deck since AI was jamming legendaries every turn but with this version the issue has been solved and i was able to ramp through the gauntlet.

regards

Khan2k14
Watermelon Eternal Version: 20.05.04
You're welcome my man <3
Rxrify Eternal Version: 1.51.7
Thank you for this interesting deck! I haven't been playing for so long, but really strugggling in Gauntlet masters - but often missing legendaries for these kind of decks. The rest I xan scrap together, but do you have a replacement suggestion for Kato? Cheers
Watermelon Eternal Version: 1.51.7
Glad I could help:) If you want to play the deck to its full potentail, Kato is a must craft; If you don't have shiftstones for him now you can try Assembly Line,or any other card with good "body number/cost ratio" to have enough sacrifice outlets. There are probably better things as well that don't come to my mind right now. Basically you want to find sac targets and potentail late game power play to replace him because that's his role in the deck. A forth copy of Torrent of Spiders might be useful as well.
Rxrify Eternal Version: 20.05.08
Thanks for the quick reply, I am currently working with Assembly Line and one Kato copy, it's working rather well for me (About 50% 7-0, rest is usually power/influence or merchant starved - record is down to 42 cards in deck without a merchant draw) Thanks again for this great deck, using it now to get my 4 Kato copies and making it even better. I did notice that some gauntlet decks have cards to remove attachments, when they used it on my Shrine it was often a 50/50 whether I would still win it.
Gilgamesh Edited Eternal Version: 1.51.7
Yo...thank you for this bundle of joy. I took a couple of test runs to get in the pilot seat, but I’m now 21-0 and going strong. I’m a fairly well versed gauntlet player, and I silently scour the interwebs for the elusive trifecta of consistently winning, consistently being fast, and consistently being fun. I gotta say, this is 1.61803398875 good. The life steal, the relevant unit destruction, the unaccounted mechanics of shrine, the color purple. Man that was a good movie. I will make a tiny suggestion that hopefully contributes back: I found after about 30 games that I didn’t even come close to marketing the Edict. I did however run into a few stalled games. I did eventually wrangle the wins, but I did long for napalm strike, so to speak. And to combat those board stalls, try your hand on Induce Madness. Yes, it is on the far right of our lovely low curve, but far right you shall have when the gears grind a bit. Dropping Induce during those stalemates feels like that that scarface moment. Again, it’s expensive, but it only comes out when you have the bandwidth to play it anyway.
metaBrook Eternal Version: 20.05.04
Hey Gilgamesh, I also "scour the interwebs" for the gauntlet trifecta. I'd love to talk about what we are finding if you would ever be up for that. So often I end up reading and rereading the same great writeups of gauntlet classics to try and get outside thoughts.
Gilgamesh Eternal Version: 20.05.06
For sure. Nowadays I spend most of my Eternal time farming gold, and I only do throne/expedition to fulfill quests, so I'm likewise absolutely down for any gauntlet discussion.
metaBrook Eternal Version: 20.05.06
Cool. I'm MetaBrook+5375 on eternal!
Gilgamesh Eternal Version: 20.05.08
Gilgamesh+3166
Watermelon Eternal Version: 1.51.7
I think that's a solid argument. I don't have shiftstones unfortunately but I'll upgrade the deck here.
wavy66 Eternal Version: 1.51.6
Great deck - loving it!
metaBrook Eternal Version: 1.51.6
Great job! Thanks for the excellent writeup!
Watermelon Eternal Version: 1.51.6
Thank you :)
Martel Eternal Version: 1.51.6
Thanks for this Powerhouse / Slaughterhouse !
Watermelon Eternal Version: 1.51.6
You're welcome <3
Martel Eternal Version: 1.51.7
Only big issue being : Shrine to Karvet down in the void (Furnace Mage, Cat Burglar...) and you're in trouble !
Makash Eternal Version: 1.51.6
First of all I'd like to say, that I really like this deck and the idea behind it.

Have you considered adding Shavka's Lute to the market and switching the Merchants again (Red instead of purple). All your Singlefaction units get warcry, which is also a boost to Shrine, also it gives you a "free" Steelbound Dragon with Charge, Warcry and Lifesteal on top for just sacrificing a grenadin drone :O
I'm currently testing that, and it really is so funny
Watermelon Eternal Version: 1.51.6
It sure seems fun as hell, but I like the deck to be as efficient as possible for gauntlet. I never had a game that required this much value but if you want to have fun that looks like some good stuff.
mikriv Eternal Version: 1.51.6
My results with this deck so far:

7-0 (end boss: forgot the name / whenever you play a unit, discount the units of the same type in your hand by 1)

7-1 (lost to High Council; end boss: Shifting Alliances)

7-0 (end boss: Feln Rittualist)

4-1 (lost to Strange Return)

6-1 (lost to Xenan Power)

7-0 (end boss: Limitless Possibilities)

Note that I came back from the hiatus, so with this I ranked up, hence the 7-1 run. In 2 of my 3 losses I was severely power screwed, so I don't weigh them much. A solid deck! I didn't have enough copies of Strange Burglar, therefore I replaced him with Stonescar Scrapper.
Watermelon Eternal Version: 1.51.6
Glad I could help:) Also you can run Strange Burglar in the market if you have 1 copy of him.
BarnacleEd Edited Eternal Version: 1.51.6
Personally I moved the Burglar to market and went with 3xVara, Vengeance-Seeker maindeck since the AI is pretty stupid about addressing her and - bluntly - she's consistently good more often than the burglar. I'm also not fully set on Urgent Missive in the market since it's extremely rare you find yourself needing more sac outlets or token generators in this deck, but I'm not sure what I'd replace it with. I also might try a kerendon-only market and add in Champion of Chaos, since it's a great all-around card (the gauntlet AI still goes into fits about deadly units after all) and I'm not super set on market Bore tbh...by the time any of the weird relic bombs come out, you should already be well on your way to victory in my limited experience with this list so far.

Fun consistent deck overall and I quite enjoy it!
Watermelon Edited Eternal Version: 1.51.6
Yeah I've changed bore for edict of makkar and missive for last chance myself.
AJLooch Eternal Version: 1.51.6
Thanks man. Brings me back to my first Eternal deck a couple years ago with bloodrite kalis and torrent of spiders.
Stormborne Eternal Version: 1.51.6
First of all, 😳👌. I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical on how well sacrifice would work in gauntlet. I’d tried before and found it too slow and inconsistent to be viable. But this... is excellent. You covered the bases fantastically. Even torrent of spiders (which I had to craft) more than proved it’s worth. Thanks for sharing!
Watermelon Eternal Version: 1.51.6
Thank you :)
Our friend in the comment below (241ackerman) below has good suggestions for upgrading the deck. His version is better imo.
Stormborne Eternal Version: 1.51.6
Try Umbren Deathwatcher. I was looking for a backup wincon in the case that shrine gets destroyed or I run out of gas... these boys are HEFTY. I’m not sure or not if I want a full set, but it’s not uncommon that I’m playing them at 8+ and sometimes (the long games) I’m dropping them at 15-20! I’ve won a few games where I never drew a merchant (I know 🙄) just because they’re doing work regardless of shrine.
Stormborne Eternal Version: 1.51.6
I’ve tried his suggestions and like a number of them as well. I think I’ve completed about 6-7 gauntlet runs without a loss yet! I’m testing some market options(hate cleaver, makkars quiver, Tasbu?? 😬) but rarely need more than shrine anyway. I think Hate Cleaver may work real well as a second market pull in that you can buff it to crazy levels quickly and the use it to remove the most annoying threats (aegis fliers)/ OTK the enemy while basically doubling the efficiency of lifesteal
241ackerman Edited Eternal Version: 1.51.6
hey man, thanks for posting the list. Shrine is for sure one of the best cards in the game for gauntlet, the AI never accounts for it when making attacks so you get free wins left and right. I did take your list for a spin through 2 gauntlet runs (fist time I made it to the boss and lost to endless possibility getting a destiny echo dragon in opening hand and second time lost in game 4 to airborn assult,) so I decided to make some changes to the list that I'll detail here for your consideration.
1. Strange Burglar was a very clucky card so I decided to move it to the Market. I replaced it with a playset of Madness, which has always been a favorite of mine in these kind of decks.
2. I didn't like my market options so I decided to swap Ixtun Merchant for Kerendon Merchant, this gave me the market of Bore (only gettable with smuggler,) Shrine, Burglar, and the new additions of Shadowlands Guide to reanimate a carver, and Vara, Vengeance-Seeker for those pesky Aegis units.
3. Urgent Missive is a cool card and I like the idea of having instant speed sac for shrine to activate on defense, but the card was not very good outside of that and was often just sent to my market, I felt a bit removal light especially against the faster decks, so I decided to go with 3 of Torch in its place, can't beat the classics.
4. I messed around with the powerbase quite a bit, with no way to fetch sigils I didn't really want to play them so I swapped the powerbase to this:


1 Fire Sigil (Set1 #1)
4 Granite Waystone (Set3 #1)
4 Emblem of Makkar (Set7 #121)
4 Crest of Chaos (Set3 #268)
4 Stonescar Banner (Set1 #419)
4 Stonescar Insignia (Set6 #228)
4 Diplomatic Seal (Set1 #425)


I hope that something I swapped around is helpful for you in grinding out gauntlet with this deck and thanks again for the post. Happy grinding!!
Watermelon Edited Eternal Version: 1.51.6
First of all, thank you very much for trying and tweaking the deck <3
Now my opinion about the changes:
1- He is somewhat clunky I agree. I like him in the main deck because he can dig deep for a merchant if I somehow didn't get any. But I understand the clunkiness of him for most people. It's a good solution to run him in the market. I myself will keep him in the deck and put Madness in the market but your way is solid I gotta say.
2- I really REALLY like the 3/3 body of the fire merchant but your suggestion sounds so good I can't pass on it without trying. I'll use madness instead of burgler in the market as mentioned before. Also, how about Last Chance instead of Shadowlands guide?
3-Pretty much agree. I was afraid of not having enough sac activators but this card isn't the best option. I think your torch replacement is great. Either torch or a good sac effect (that I can't think of right now)
4- The power changes are fantastic. I have some personal love for basic power so I'm gonna mostly stick to my basic list but I'd say every other person would be better with you version of power. I think I'll add some Emblems of Makkar to my list foe the deadly body

And again, thank you very much <3