Updated 5/20
Removed
Freedom Fighter in favor of
Ponysnatcher. They largely fill the same role as units that can attack aggressively, but
Ponysnatcher has the added bonus of being able to trigger
Aerie Steward the turn she is played, and just being another source of life gain and another flying unit is huge. You can't cheese the AI quite as much into sacrificing their units, because the AI understands how quickdraw works and not invulnerability, but quickdraw does handle decay units much better too.
The market has been revamped as well to include
Dark Return and
Forget.
Dark Return is generally better than
Sinister Rumors, and
Forget is almost exclusively included for the incredily rare times where the enemy is able to play multiple copies of
Groundbreaker before you are able to find a wincon. I've lost one out of the last 10 or so with this deck because of that, and this definitely helps negate that, as well as dealing with anything else that might need silencing as well.
------------------------------
I've played through 7 gauntlets with this so far with no losses and it's been an absolute wrecking ball. This is an iteration of my previous lifesteal combo deck
Gauntlet Lifesteal Combo - More Combos, More Bees!, but much faster and more consistent. With the addition of bolster and
Dran, Won't Back Down, you can win games under 4 power with ease, and you are much less reliant on drawing
Katra, the Devoted, who was the core of every win condition in the previous deck.
Strategy
This deck is all about synergy. Use your triggers (Sanctuary Priest, Grumbo, Temple Scribe, Ancient Bauble) to activate your heavy hitters (Dran, Katra, Aerie Steward) and blow up your board to win fast and big.
Tips
Pause for Reflection can be used to remove blockers, remove units with weapons, protect your own units targeted by kill spells, and activate bolster/lifesteal.
Pause for Reflection and
Condemn can be used on the enemy turn to activate bolster, which is very valuable with an
Aerie Steward on the board, especially in reponse to removal to get an extra
Albatross out before she dies.
Grumbo, Tota Legend should almost always be your first 2 drop on the board unless you fear
Vara's Favor or
Torch. Then it might be useful to try and bait those out with
Freedom Fighter or a 1 drop, since those are less essential units to your wincon.
Spiritweaver,
Moldermuck, and
Katra, the Devoted are an incredible combo and have been the core of all of my lifesteal combo decks.
Grumbo, Tota Legend,
Moldermuck, and
Katra, the Devoted are also a game winning combo if left unchecked.
Try and play into these as much as you can.
Try and always play
Aerie Steward with a
Grumbo, Tota Legend on the board or at 5 power with a
Condemn or
Pause for Reflection or
Ancient Bauble or
Ponysnatcher in play. Playing her just to die to removal without giving you an albatross is a waste. It's also usually best to play her before
Katra, the Devoted whenever possible because the AI likes to target her albatrosses with removal.
Aerie Steward and
Spiritweaver are a powerful combo, because your albatrosses gain lifesteal and you can replenish one per turn by triggering bolster by either attacking or blocking.
Market
Since the deck is now faster, we use
Condemn for market access. This also can kill annoying 1 health units and trigger bolster/lifesteal, with the added bonus of being fast (allowing you to bolster on the enemy turn as well which is huge).
You pretty much always want to be pulling
Ancient Bauble first, and probably
Sinister Rumors second to bring back a key unit.
Infinite Hourglass is there for permafrost, and specifically the Deep Freeze gauntlet deck. You essentially win on the spot with it, it's great.
Alternate Cards
Curtain Call: While this deck has been performing really well so far, I feel like adding
Curtain Call somewhere would be pretty devastating in allowing more aggressive attacks against deadly units and locked boards, more access to lifesteal. and more protection against removal. However, I'm not sure how reliably you would be able to play it with TTTT influence to gain its invulnerability when you want to play it given how fast this deck can play. It might slot in well in place of
Rite of Renewal or maybe 1 or 2 of
Sanctuary Priest.
Bloodnurse: Bloodnurse is super fragile and really needs a triggered
Dran, Won't Back Down or
Katra, the Devoted on the board to have any impact, but it can be pretty devastating if it gets rolling. Particularly, the combo of
Bloodnurse, Grumbo, Tota, Legend and
Katra, the Devoted is incredible and almost immediately game ending. However, it can't do much by itself. I could see it potentially being a replacement for
Sanctuary Priest, however my hesitation with that replacement is that
Sanctuary Priest can trigger
Aerie Steward when you have nothing else going on, and doesn't die immediately to cards like
Vara's Favor that gauntlet decks love so much. It depends if you want a facilitator or a win-more card.
I played a deck like this before so I understand how good this is. Especially in gauntlet. I played that Xenan Rat Bolster gauntlet deck from this site. Many of the same cards. But with rat cage and cabal scavenger and such. The deck didn't quite play like this one does though. The Crack the Earth was nice. And 5 costs were nice. But I always liked condemn, and it works great here.
I usually try to offer alternatives or suggestions to decks I come across, no matter how good they are. But this one is hard to make any recommendations for.
The tweaks the new one has are good. -2 Temple Scribe. For 2 more Rite of Renewal. But 4 of those IS a bit much 🤷 even for this.
The card I wasn't liking was Ponysnatcher. I was usually able to gain life per turn without it. I was playing it first to bait torches and the like. It's a good torch magnet really. Any life gain on attack or flying life steal might be good instead. Maybe Oasis Seeker, Hive Stinger,? Bloodsucking Skeeter would be a much better replacement. It's definitely different by costing 1 more. Would offset the rites of renewal if you went to 4 of them. But I like having deadly in this deck. A deadly lifesteal blocker, being able to trigger bolster on their turn is good. Bonus of not being targetable really. Great for that 1 final deck with 18//18 Champion of Progress and other fatties.
You're right. Multiple Groundbreakers would be the bane to this. And gauntlet has like 2 decks with them I think? The other guy removed your silence so he only had 1 market removal for it. But I like the silence.
The only thing I ever really wanna market for is power. Other version guy subbed a Blueprints for silence. But I'd take out the Ancient Bauble instead maybe. And I'd use a Containment Sphere instead. Does same thing essentially but with added option of shutting their void down.
Power is actually really good. I don't like the sigils or seats but they work here.
You could use more banners over seats. Gonna be hard to have a sigil for them anyway. I usually jam 4.tombs. If this deck is going to struggle to get past 2-3, Then crests might even be better than seats.
So -7 seats and sigils. Instead:
1 more banner
2 more tombs
Some Crests
Small amounts of these could also be good:
Secluded Rift
Emblem of Makkar
Amethyst Coin
Overall this deck is amazing. Another great part for achievement hunters is it'll help getting to that 1 mil damage faster.
Ponysnatcher or temple scribe would be better to remove some of.
It's the most reliable bolster/lifesteal trigger in the deck, and removing him makes Cult Aspirant, Aerie Steward, and Dran all notably worse.
Generally speaking, power screw happens at 2 power with this deck, and Grumbo is a great stabilizer at low power, since he can provide a big blocking body with enough 1-2 power units to boost him (and Cult Aspirant also benefits from all of his triggers). It would probably be more useful to replace a card that would be otherwise unplayable or useless at 2 power, so something like Rite of Renewal would probably be better to remove. Maybe 2x Rite of Renewal and 2x Sanctuary Priest in Grumbo's place?
Thanks for posting this. It's just hilarious to play.
Edit: 5 gauntlets run with 0 losses. (35-0)