EDIT: With the current iteration of the decklist I won over 30 Gauntlets completely out of 41 attempts. (Exactly 247 games won, 11 lost.) There is still room for improvement. To play this deck properly one might need some practice. Oh, Azindel, Revealed... Either your opponent quits immediately or you live long enough to see yourself lose. It's rare that you ever steal cards. BUT NOW YOU CAN in Gauntlet.
I've been working on a shell that can make use of
Azindel, Revealed in Gauntlet - because it's the only place where you can really experience the fun part of playing
Azindel, Revealed. And what is almost as much fun as
Azindel, Revealed? Correct:
Evenhanded Golem!
Are you ready to draw cards, put an
Evenhanded Golemback in your hand to draw again, draw a little more with a few
Temple Scribes, keep a few
Ancient Lores to draw at a later time, block and then teleport your
Evenhanded Golem back to prevent damage but also draw some cards on your next turn? Well, then this deck is for you!
Are you ready to go through your deck in search of an answer to a crippling
Royal Decree? Well, you don't have to because the A.I. doesn't know this Eternal card and how it can wreck you. But the A.I. knows annoying flying creatures - and you usually find your
Gnash, Desert Prince sooner than you need it. What do you mean, you already played
Gnash, Desert Prince? Then put him back into your hand with
Burdenbearer Wisp or
Teleport and play him again.
(Do you know that if you played a
Saber-Tooth Prideleader and you put him back into your hand, that the A.I. immediately loses all memory about him and will fall again for his ambush?)
Jokes aside, this deck is a lot of fun. Your endgame is
Azindel, Revealed and by proxy whatever your opponents endgame plan was. And something else:
You will almost never be mana-screwed.
Opening Hand: - Never keep a hand with only 1 Power Card. (duh!)
- Keep a hand with an
Evenhanded Golem. Even if you start with 2x
Azindel, Revealed and you consider them dead cards, your golem will usually draw you enough cards to start clogging up the field with your creatures.
Early Game: - Try to find out what deck you are playing against. You can basically find every A.I. deck online, buut usually the name tells you what you are up against. This will help with the following tips.
- Pay attention to the power cards your opponent is playing. It can give you a hint what cards you can expect him to play.
- If you start the game with a
Teacher of Humility and an
Evenhanded Golem consider the following for your turn-2-play: If the oppponent plays Fire, you can expect your
Teacher of Humility to catch a
Torch. There is an argument to be made to not play her first, but in my experience, if the A.I. doesn't answer her immediately, it will play a creature instead that will not block her. But then again, aggro-decks usually don't play much card draw, so you might opt to sacrifice your
Evenhanded Golem to the flames to have a chance to stick your
Teacher of Humility.
Tell me how it went. No, really, I need feedback. =)
- If you start the game with a
Devotee of the Sands and an
Evenhanded Golem, you should play the
Devotee of the Sands on turn 2
shifted. This way, you will have 3 Power on turn 3 guaranteed, your
Evenhanded Golem can be played then, probably drawing you a 4th Power to play, so you have another 2 Power to play something else.
- If you have to choose between playing
Temple Scribe and
Evenhanded Golem, then the name of this deck might help you decide.
- You will use
Teleport almost always to put your
Evenhanded Golem back into your hand
after you declared him a blocker.
Mid-Game: - There is almost no mid-game. Nice!
- Stall, lie, cheat, steal until you get your 8th Power for Azindel. Meanwhile, try to populate the board with your puny creatures.
- As stated before, use
Teleport or
Burdenbearer Wisp to put your
Evenhanded Golem back into your hand
after you declared him a blocker. Same goes for other creatures, especially
Saber-Tooth Prideleader, and sometimes something that can make Power cards available to you.
-
Devour your
Talir's Favored and
Temple Scribe cards, but preferably after declaring blockers or at the end of the opponents turn.
- Find out if your opponent plays creature with
Flying. You might want to start looking for a
Gnash, Desert Prince or keep him in your hand. Or put him back into your hand. Or play him, to undo their
Aegis, put him back into your hand and play him again. (No kidding, this deck does these things really often.)
Endgame: - Play
Azindel, Revealed and attack with your
Devotee of the Sands who just emerged or your flying
Burdenbearer Wisps. After that, your enemies gameplan is now yours.
- Why a single
Talir, Who Sees Beyond? Because she will draw you something that draws something, and most likely this something has
Destiny. It makes me sad to watch
Azindel, Revealed go straight to the void because the board is full, but that is usually an indicator that you did nothing wrong.
EXTRA: Card choices: You've probalby seen 3x
Sand Warrior. Basically, this deck many open slots - but they need to be filled with creatures.
I took a comment to heart and tried out
Amaran Armadillo and it's working quite nicely. Also,
Living Example can be of help sometimes, but I'd rather fill his spot with something that can help, when you are in a pickle.
This deck has been piloted in Gauntlet on Masters. If you reached this point, thank you for reading. Try out this deck. It is beginner-friendly regarding the Shiftstone cost.
I will update the decklist as I *finally* craft some
Sandstorm Titans and try them out.
Evidence: 31th August 2019 - I did five 7-0 runs out of six today and these are some of the screenshots:
1st September 2019 - I switched a few cards from the original list and won three out of three Gauntlets (21-0) straight. Thanks for the comments and improvment advice! I will keep on testing some unconventional card choices to try and surprise you.
Burdenbearer Wisp
x4
2
Cull the Deck
x4
2
Devotee of the Sands
x4
2
Devour
x2
2
Evenhanded Golem
x4
2
Talir's Favored
x4
2
Teacher of Humility
x4
2
Teleport
x4
2
Temple Scribe
x4
4
Ancient Lore
x1
4
Saber-Tooth Prideleader
x4
4
Sandstorm Titan
x2
4
Xenan Obelisk
x1
6
Gnash, Desert Prince
x4
8
Azindel, Revealed
x4
Shadow Sigil
x1
Time Sigil
x13
Seat of Mystery
x4
Xenan Banner
x3
Xenan Insignia
x4
View Deck on Shiftstoned
Edit: And in true Gauntlet style I lost the first game of the second run to power screw and it had every answer to what little I was able to put down.
Here's my take on it. Currently 3-1 in Gauntlet runs. Call for Aid and Siphon Vitality are just cards I wanted to shoehorn into the deck.
Shadow brings a lot to the table. Removal that Time doesn't necessarily provide.
It's way worse than the mono time even deck for one thing.
Rather than a solid gauntlet deck it's a decent deck based on the cards you have.
For example living example and armidilo should be replaced by blackhalls. No idea why you don't have desecrate one of the best removals in the game.
For anti air sandtitans is way better than slimesplitter splug. Burdenwisp is just bad.
Insatiable Serasaur while good is deadweight half the time which is why you don't see it often even though it can ramp immensely.
Sabertooth is a 'market' card because there's only 1 deck that you really need relic removal (and not even needed).
Really need 4 crests and replace talir's favored with 4 trail makers.
Deck's too slow, relies on a lot of luck and not enough consistency considering how many cards you have that don't come in 4's.
Evenhanded gauntlet decks only shine when you have the cards to make it work. Really surprised you managed to luck out with 4 wins when half the cards are poor substitutes for better cards.
- 4x Saber-Tooth Prideleader Is good in Gauntlet, because the A.I. does not consider Ambush, almost always yielding a profitable block, it provides life or destroys relics when needed and it is on color.
- Blackhall Warleader is neither on color, nor does he do anything until she hits the enemy, which is unlikely to occur. Living Example does at least something. The slot for these cards is for experimenting anyway.
- This deck doesn't have hard remoal, because it is trying to throw creatures at your opponent and get you to the endgame ASAP.
- It doesn't need 4 crests, because depleted Power sets you back a turn and this deck - as stated before - is trying to get you to the endgame plan fast.
- Trail Makers will only eat torches, block nothing and make me waste a turn.
- Burdenbearer Wisp is a key-card. Maybe I did not explain quite good enoug: You use Teleports and Burdenbearer Wisps to bring back your Evenhanded Golems. Basically, for 4 Power you draw 2 cards. That means, with 4x Golem, 4x Teleport, 4x Burdenbearer Wisp, 3x Ancient Lore, 2x Devour, one has 17 possibilities to draw 2 cards. Saying "Burdenwisp is just bad" is as much an argument as me saying "nope, it's not".
Last but not least, let me explain the core concept of this deck:
You have 28 cards that cost 2 or less Power, and with a redraw, there is a probability of 100% to have 2 Power on turn 2. I don't want to write a statistics paper on this deck, but that means, that there is an extremely high chance to have 4 Power on turn 4, which lets you play the rest of the card-draw-shenanigans. Bascially, it is almost certain to have 6 Power on turn 6 and 8 Power on turn 9. Average win by turn 11. Look at the screenshots.
I also mentioned in the description, that there are 9 cards, that can be exchanged, but they have to be creatures and on color.
Also, please don't take this the wrong way, because I appreciate your comment: I would really like to know how you play this deck.
Maybe you don't play it right or maybe I expected the wrong things and did not explain well enough how to play it.
PS: The statistics on Shiftstoned.com might be interesting.
As for why I think your deck is weak and I think you are lucky is that I died with your deck 2nd round turn5. Died to a 8/8 aegis lifeleech flier(combrei) which I could do nothing about with your deck. Your deck has been lucky because it has no 'answers' for a lot of potential situations which is what the best gauntlet decks have, answers for every situation.
Why you see a lot of good shadow incorporated decks use warhall is because it's a 2/3 blocker for COST 2 that is superior to warcry in everyway. 2nd round 99% of the time the cards will be 2-2 at most and a 2-3 means without bolt/removal will certainly end up being a 3-4 blocker. Under the same situation warhall is simply better than a 2/2 inspire 100% of the time simply because turn 3 means bolt won't work on it. Turn 6-7 warhall is less useful than it, but at the same time turn 6-7 it shouldn't matter anyway.
Why crests are GOOD is that it solves influence problem and allows you to scout and fix upcoming cards.
But I can see why your deck doesn't use it since it's 90% timebased and the few shadowcards you have doesn't actually improve the deck at all.
As I said previously, it's a poor mans time evenhanded deck which is superior to this deck in everyway with the main difference being it has Azindel.
Fyi the improved mono time evenhanded deck I use doesn't even have Talir, since 90% of the time games over before turn 8 even though it has a way better powercurve and draw than your deck because cost 8 cards are a deadweight 99% of the time (games decided before you have 8 power).
I do have a shadow/time evenhanded deck but it's around 50/50 split with blackhalls, varas , removal and has a similar gauntlet winrate to the evenhanded deck (50%~).
You make valid points and I will calculate and test each idea proposed in this thread.
Concerning Combrei: I admit, that Combrei wasn't a problem for me yet, but I can see that there might be a threat. I advice you to keep your creatures as long as you can and only start blocking to protect you from dying. Try to keep a hand with Azindel when playing against Combrei (but always prioritize a hand with a Golem), since he can steal their key-cards. Only block with Golem if you can bring him back or if you have another one already in your hand.
I will try out some builds today to counter your problem =)
I didn't have any copies of teacher so I replaced it with Living Example and it seems like a perfect fit for the deck, it's not seen as much of a threat (the A.I. will target burdenbearer wisp first), so it will generate insane value with all the sources of card draw
Just like you did i swapped Teacher of Humility (eventhough i have 4 copies), but i swapped it for Amaran Armadillo, because it gives my units Endurcance and that just kills all the Stun decks & gives +1/+1 to all the Endurance units aslong as Amrmadillo is in play
Thank you for commenting. I am going to refine this list soon!