TOP 50 Sanctum Mortiferum

The Haunting Scream change certainly was painful but fear not! We have a saving grace in two forms.

First of all, the addition of Eremot's Designs has made the deck more resilient to Aggro, T2 Teacher of Humility, and decks like Isomorphic’s 3F Derriest Mandrake. The second comes in the overall decrease of power in the meta which gives the deck breathing room again.

Cards like Ice Bolt and Annihilate are still fantastic removal spells and the core of the deck is still healthy in Vara's Sanctum, Blitrok, Linrei's Listener and Black-Sky Harbinger.

HOW THE DECK WORKS:
I believe the best place to start is recognizing that in most matchups we are the control deck (I will address when we are not further down), most games end in opponent conceding to overwhelming card advantage or we win by grinding them out until our “one unit at a time“ strategy goes the distance. Ultimately we want to assemble Vara's Sanctum with Blitrok, Linrei's Listener, Black-Sky Harbinger or Yetipult to deliver punishing blows to our opponent in the form of Deadly Pings. Occasionally we do take the beatdown route, almost exclusively against unitless decks. Our Sanctums likely won’t matter so feel free to pitch them to Honor of Claws in order to keep more units to push into play. Even more rare do we draw enough Vara/Harbinger that we jam them into the board to kill our opponent the old fashioned way. Recognizing when to make that turn is hard and very dependent on game state, so be vigilant for those 1% scenarios.

Attachments-
Vara's Sanctum is obviously the namesake of the deck and the key card for what we are trying to do.

Units-
Yetipult and Harbinger usually end up being one sided board wipes that gain some life or at the very least you clear everything that matters. These two units are fairly straightforward. Blitrock is a bit more unique in application and requires some counting. Rarely do I play Blitrok before 7 power. Seriously. If you can play Blitrok to Invoke and get an immediate kill with Sanctum out, it’s great. And this scales when you get to 10 power and 13 power when you are able to Invoke a second time off of her Mastery. Another benefit to our pinging units is the ability to take down sites, which occurs fairly often, or team up with other damage sources to finish units when Sanctum isn’t active. Evenhanded Golem is not the focus of this deck but a fantastic card to have since it draws towards our removal/combo, blocks against aggro, and backs up as both a threat with Sanctum as well as being an easy Devour unit. Dark Wisp is functionally a worse Golem but still happens to be powerful enough that it is worth playing for the same reasons. Forcing your opponent to kill a 7/1 Deadly Lifesteal Wisp feels great. Vara, Vengeance-Seeker is our outlier, especially with Scream gone we can no longer have the old chain Vara plan to close a game but regardless she is still a great card to help us break pesky Aegis, slow down aggro, and buffer our life total.

Spells-
As covered before Ice Bolt and Annihilate are our premium removal suite that second perfectly as a way to keep our own unit count down to one so Sanctum can function. Do not be afraid to kill our own unit to create a devastating turn for our opponent with the pinging units. Ice Bolt even ramps for our trouble. Eremot's Designs is the new kid on the block who packs a punch against aggro and token strategies while also helping us to maintain a board state of exactly one unit. Devour is another crucial card for the deck as an amazing way to remove our Permafrosted units, make even better use of our Dark Wisps/Golems and blowout removal from our opponent. It can also save pingers from silence effects so that we can return them later with Last Chance. Last Chance is only a two of for flexible “tutoring” from our Void. Many games it ends up being unnecessary but just as many games lean heavily on using it to great effect without spending extra power. Honor of Claws is another more recent addition that is a known powerhouse and has proven to be essential to this strategy as well, it provides us even more card advantage and allows us to make use of whatever dead cards we have by pitching them to the Void. Then, straggling along, we have 2 Vara’s Favor which help hit our power while also boosting our aggro matchup slightly, removing Aegis, and teaming up with our pinging units.

HONORARY MENTIONS
There are many cards that I have tried or been asked about as additions to the deck, but this list is very tight and doesn’t have much room for cards the don’t perform a critical role.

Royal Decree- Would be a way to help against decks like Reanimator/Spellcrag but those matchups aren’t as bad as they may seem. Decree is terrible against aggro and doesn’t have synergy with any other card in our deck. The Onslaught is also relatively likely to not occur.

Rindra’s Choice- Depending on the meta I would actually consider one or two over Annihilate but Annihilate currently is pretty good against the current field as well as performing the dual role of removing our own units to enable Sanctum shenanigans.

Tamarys, Earthshaker- Tamarys used to be in the slot currently filled by Blitrok since it was good against Aggro and combo’d with Sanctum against ground armies. However, needing to shift is a liability since you cannot remove it for the next pinger, and flying units are out in plenty.