Hello, I wanted to share a deck I've been using to grind the gauntlet. Like many players I started Eternal with a rakano deck; being f2p I've mainly spent my shiftstone trying to improve what I already have instead of starting something new from scratch.
Many of the best gauntlet decks have some legendaries. Although my deck has some rares and is not completely budget, it is still a cheaper option with many cards you might own already. I'll still discuss some replacements for some of the rares.
I also play aggro rakano in ranked, but with a different list; this one is meant to abuse the AI a bit, which is awful at anticipating fast spells. Not only does it not anticipate the spells, it does not understand that it will buff
Rilgon's Disciple and
Kosul Battlemage, and it get caught into bad trades or surprise lethals.
Rilgon's Disciple +
Shugo Standard
wins many games.
I don't like cards with lifesteal in gauntlet, I think the battle skill is wasted. the AI is usually not aggressive enough for your life to matter. In my ranked Rakano deck, I play
Whirling Duo,
Crownwatch Standard, and sometimes
Unseen Commando; these cards are good in aggro mirrors. Here, either you win, or you run out of gas and having 40 life will not help you. Still, you can play those 3 drops if you don't have
Shogun's Scepter.
Crownwatch Deserter is also alright, but it's a bit slow.
Another Ranked rakano staple is
Crownwatch Paladin, but the AI doesn't play cards like
Hailstorm or
Harsh Rule very often so the aegis is less valuable.
Inquisitor's Blade is nice, but not essential. A good old
Morningstar or a
Crownwatch Cavalry are cheaper options if you don't have it.
Battleblur Centaur is the card I'm the less sure of; it works well with warcry, and it blocks well the AI's deck which are all unit-based. It can also "clean the board" because the AI will block it multiple time to try to kill it and you can sweep it all off with a pump spell. Still... it's a 2/5. Again,
Morningstar or
Crownwatch Cavalry are good.
I don't know if my power base is optimal. Should I play more Fire sigils? Less Justice sigils? Some monuments? I don't know how to figure it out, so feel free to play with it. But keep the 4
Shugo Standard, the card is amazing!
The biggest risk this deck has is not getting to 3 power. Try to get there in the mulligan.
UPDATE 11 Oct:
Added 2
Crest of Glory at the suggestion of Ninjacan in the comments. Working fine so far. I wouldn't add more, we only run 25 powers and the scout isn't always useful because with a warcry unit on the top you kinda want to keep it.
I'm back to using the
Whirling Duo... I still think lifesteal is not very useful for this deck, but a 3/3 charge is actually good. Still looking for a better replacement.
Some
Vanquisher's Blade instead of
Vanquish; because against many decks the Vanquish are actually dead cards.
I actually also switched two
Inquisitor's Blade with two
Deepforged Plate, inspired by Pikerbocker comment, but I don't want to put it in the decklist cause I would like to keep the list cheap. But yeah Deepforged plate is amazing for gaultlet!
https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/details/yg_1I9Y_i1E/rakano-masters-gauntlet-grinder