Kabuki Relay

Kabuki Relay is a combo deck that aims to attach Dramatist's Mask to a token, guaranteeing a tributed First Flame from your deck on the next turn for 24 damage plus extra units to finish the job. It can combo off as early as turn 4, but more commonly goes off around turn 6.

The deck's namesake is the fact that we are trying to find as many copies of Dramatist's Mask as possible, as quickly as possible, so a token can pass it off to First Flame. To this end we are playing 15 cantrips and the full 12 crests. Strategize's most important use in the deck is putting drawn copies of First Flame back into your deck, so you will always want to save it until it is the last cantrip in your hand. Second Sight can be used in a few different ways. With 12 crests, you can use it like more copies of Strategize, putting an unwanted card on top and then Scouting it to the bottom. Similarly, you can put an unwanted card on top if you are about to follow it up with a Cull the Deck or Quarry. Lastly, if you suspect your opponent is playing Rain of Frogs or Sabotage, it can be saved to protect a valuable combo piece in your hand.

To protect our combo we play 4 copies of Sabotage, two copies of Unseal and two copies of Rindra's Choice. I recommend saving Sabotage for your combo turn if you can afford to wait a little longer, but it's okay to try to go off without it if you have a backup Mask in hand.

We are playing cheap removal options for the most part with the goal being to slow down aggro or midrange long enough to combo off, or to clear the way for First Flame when it hits. We're not planning on playing into the long game against aggro or fast midrange, so we generally don't need to save our removal for key targets, with a few exceptions. Time decks will likely be playing Teacher of Humility which ruins our ability to churn through our deck. Luckily it is vulnerable to almost all our removal, so we can kill it on sight. The other units that disrupt our strategy are Valkyrie Enforcer and Hooru Pacifier. The latter prevents us from casting our Mask, and the former is a very efficient reaction to a vulnerable equipped creature. We play two copies of In Cold Blood that need to be saved to answer these threats.

Our bad matchup is any deck packing lots of removal, as the only threat we present for the whole game is a 2/2 that dies to everything. Our good matchups are Time midrange decks attempting to win through board control which play little disruption for our combo, aggro decks that kill slower than us and are vulnerable to our removal, and other combo decks which are almost certainly slower than us.

Mulligans for this deck are quite simple: barring obvious exceptions due to influence or power screw, you will want to keep any hand with Mask and redraw anything else.

The deck doesn't really need more than 6 power for Mask + Unseal / Rindra's Choice. We need all three factions as soon as possible in order to play out our cantrips and removal, but we also need to achieve FFF to activate our Granite Waystones.

Kabuki Relay is a blast to play and I will be doing my best to refine it as the season progresses. This seems like the fastest and most effective combo in Eternal as of yet and I am excited to see how it evolves. Please feel free to leave suggestions or link me to your own builds of the deck, as I know there are many different ways of building it.