Minotaur Armory Like It's 2019 (Rank 1 Dec 2022)

The third and perhaps final installment of the trilogy consisting of Minotaur Armory Like It's 2017 and Minotaur Armory Like It's 2018.

Rank 1 on Dec 11 2022. I never thought I'd be able to retake Rank 1 with Armory ever again, yet here I am. It is my first truly satisfying victory since my return.

Armory will always be my favorite deck. It got me to my first ever rank 1 and many more afterward, and I claim to have known its various sub-strategies and iterations better than anyone back in the day.

By the time I left Eternal, it would have been early 2019, and Armory was on its way out. Decks that spammed 1/1s and/or 6/6s, that played one-card instant boards, that had Charge on half their cards, meant hitting one thing with your face per turn was no longer enough to keep up. What iterations of it remained relied less on relic weapon synergy and played more like traditional control decks, relying on cheap non-weapon removal and board wipes to stay in the game, winning with strong individual cards rather than synergy.

That this deck's development mirrored 2017-2019 Armory's - at first going all-in on relic weapon synergy, then, in response to metagame shifts, gradually transitioning to winning with standalone card quality with a weapon synergy sub-theme, was serendipity.

Ironically, the nerf to Stonebreaker Bow helped the deck rather than hurt. Every threat in the deck except Black Book, Pit Boss died to it, and there's plenty of other powerful cards this deck can play. The Scornful Elite-Stonebreaker Bow soft lock didn't happen consistently enough to be worthwhile pre-nerf, and isn't a huge loss.

Compared to the previous version, this deck no longer has Oni Forgesmith and Stonebreaker Bow, cut because of the nerf, or Golden Horn Security, cut because it can often be ignored. Instead, it now has Collision Course, to maintain the power base and make up for the loss of Stonebreaker Bow, plus Raniya, Miviox Maniac and Scalesworn Patrol as strong individual threats to earn card advantage and/or force answers.

Despite Lutestrung Bow being the deck's only remaining relic weapon, general play patterns remain pretty much the same, with a greater emphasis on using Taunt (instead of your face) to remove opposing units.