Today I want to share some of the decks I have been having success with in Masters Ranked games. A question you should ask yourself before you start playing Ranked in Eternal is: What is my goal? If your goal is strictly to have the highest possible win rate and climb the ladder, what you play will be very different than if your goal is to brew some wacky decks.
Set Reviews
Time | Primal | Shadow | Fire | Justice | Elysian – Combrei | Feln – Stonescar | Rakano – Factionless
Mouse over any underlined card to see what it does.
I believe that it is probably a more valuable use of your time to try brewing crazy decks while we are in closed beta. Eventually all of your progress will be wiped out when the game launches and you will want to play your strongest decks early on upon release so that you can rebuild your collection quickly. Now is the time to explore and learn about as many interactions as possible. Hopefully you will find some overlap – decks that are innovative and also win a decent amount. I did this very thing with a Vodkhan Combo deck that I played to a second place finish at the last Scion’s League open tournament. Here is the list:
Combrei Vodakhan Combo
4 Seek Power
4 Desert Marshal
4 Secret Pages
4 Voice of the Speaker
4 Amber Acolyte
4 Siraf, Crownwatch Hero
4 Sandstorm Titan
4 The Great Parliament
4 Harsh Rule
4 Marshal Ironthorn
4 Mystic Ascendant
4 Vodakhan, Temple Speaker
9 Justice Sigil
10 Time Sigil
4 Combrei Banner
4 Seat of Progress
This deck started out more all in on finding Sigils, but what I found out in testing was that it was more important to land a unit to stabilize the board to prolong the game to get your combos online. Playing out a Siraf or Sandstorm Titan also forced my opponents to overcommit to the board and my Harsh Rule got a lot better as a result.
The basic game plan is to play Seek Power, Secret Pages, and Amber Acolyte early on to ensure you hit all of your power drops. Siraf, Sandstorm Titan, Harsh Rule and The Great Parliament help you survive to the end game. You are hoping to set up some combination of Vodakhan with Voice of the Speaker, Mystic Ascendant, or Marshal Ironthorn. Vodakhan plus any of these other units will let you draw a huge amount of cards and put a huge amount of power into play.
For example, if you have Vodakhan and Voice of the Speaker in play and you draw a Time Sigil, Voice will create a copy and then because Vodakhan grants them Destiny both sigils will go directly into play and you will draw two cards. If you draw any other power cards the process repeats and can lead you to drawing a large portion of your deck. If you have either of Mystic Ascendant or Marshal Ironthorn it gets even crazier. Eventually you will play an Ironthorn and destroy all of your opponent’s units and attack with a huge Vodakhan along with your other units. You can also put a huge number of owls into play with The Great Parliament or activate Siraf multiple times in a turn.
This deck is great against Rakano Pants and other Time based midrange decks. It struggles against the Primal based control decks and it can be hard to beat the aggressive Bandit Queen decks on the draw. I don’t think this is the best deck to ladder with, but it is a fun one and certainly has a positive win rate.
What are the best decks to climb the ladder? To maximize your time, you are incentivized to play the quickest winning deck with the highest possible win rate. This way, you will either win or lose quickly and thus get more games in to leverage your win rate and climb the ladder. As a general rule of thumb, aggressive decks are a strong choice because it can be hard for a mid-range or control deck to have the exact answer they need for the threats you are presenting. They need slightly different answers for a Bandit Queen token deck than they do for a Rakano Pants deck. With 75 card decks, they may not draw the right answers at the right time.
The metagame of Ranked play can vary wildly, however. It is possible that enough players play decks hostile to aggressive strategies that the best deck to play might be something else entirely. Where we are at right now, aggressive decks are still quite good. Given that, here is my pick for the best aggressive deck to play Ranked with:
Extra Large Rakano Pants
4 Gilded Glaive
4 Oni Ronin
4 Pyroknight
4 Torch
4 Champion of Glory
4 Crownwatch Paladin
4 Rakano Outlaw
2 Vanquish
4 Shogun’s Scepter
4 Silverwing Familiar
4 Sword of Icaria
4 Deepforged Plate
9 Fire Sigil
6 Justice Sigil
4 Diplomatic Seal
1 Emerald Monument
1 Granite Monument
4 Rakano Banner
4 Seat of Glory
This version of Rakano Pants aims to go slightly over the top of the other aggressive decks. The basic game plan is to play out some cheap units and then equip one of your many weapons, or pants, cards to turn your cheap units into game ending threats.
Playing 29 power, two of which being monuments, allows you to more reliably cast Deepforged Plate which is often a trump card in many matchups. Playing a high power count also makes your Gilded Glaives and Pyroknights better. It is actually surprisingly important to hit three power on turn three in this deck with all of the three cost cards being that much better on turn three. The quicker you can set up a big Silverwing Familiar, the better. Despite the ability to go very large with this deck, you can also have some very aggressive openings with multiple one drops or even a handful of two drops that can put plenty of pressure on control decks. Many control decks have a big problem with Sword of Icaria and the sword is a great answer to opposing Silverwing Familiars. If you are running into too many Sandstorm Titans or Circos, you may want to add two more Vanquish in place of two Sword of Icaria.
If you are tired of losing to aggressive decks, or just want to mix things up, I recommend this build of Stonescar:
Stonescar Maiden Midrange
2 Sabotage
4 Torch
4 Annihilate
4 Argenport Instigator
4 Vara’s Favor
4 Champion of Chaos
4 Plague
4 Deathstrike
4 Impending Doom
4 Statuary Maiden
4 Autofurnace
2 Umbren Reaper
2 Infernal Tyrant
8 Fire Sigil
11 Shadow Sigil
2 Amethyst Monument
4 Seat of Chaos
4 Stonescar Banner
This deck is built to be as hostile as possible to the aggressive decks with plenty of cheap removal, good blockers, and even some life gain with Umbren Reaper and Infernal Tyrant. The deck also has game against other decks with its efficient units. There is even a light combo element in the right matchup. If you play a Statuary Maiden and then Plague a number of enemy units to death, you will generate a lot of Cudgels! Cudgels go particularly well with a fully powered Champion of Chaos or any of the flying units. Notably, one Cudgel on the Maiden herself makes her a great blocker for Sandstorm Titan. Autofurnace (Scraptank) can help stabilize a board against token decks and present a solid threat against Control. Against midrange decks, it can grow very large in short order. It is nice that this deck has some solid answers to Dawnwalker with Plague and Statuary Maiden. The Sabotages are very much a flex spot in the deck. Feel free to experiment with other things in that slot.
If you are looking to play a proactive Time deck, I recommend this build of Elysian:
Elysian Wisp Ramp
4 Initiate of the Sands
4 Permafrost
4 Predator’s Instinct
4 Friendly Wisp
4 Sauropod Wrangler
2 Teleport
4 Dawnwalker
4 False Prince
4 Champion of Wisdom
4 Sandstorm Titan
2 Xenan Obelisk
4 Cirso, the Great Glutton
2 Hunting Pteriax
2 Predatory Carnosaur
6 Primal Sigil
9 Time Sigil
4 Diplomatic Seal
4 Elysian Banner
4 Seat of Wisdom
This deck focuses on the five strength synergy cards – Friendly Wisp, Sauropod Wrangler, and Dawnwalker. You turn these on with your hyper efficient threats of False Prince, Champion of Wisdom, Sandstorm Titan, Cirso, the Great Glutton, Hunting Pteriax, and Predatory Carnosaur. Predator’s Instinct is great in this deck, on Dawnwalker for repeatable Killer abilities, or even on any of your other large units. Just don’t cast it on False Prince! Killer is very good right now, especially against Aegis units as Aegis does not protect units from Killer. Hunting Pteriax is especially sweet with Dawnwalker. You can cast it when your opponents attack to bring back Dawnwalker(s) to block! Teleport is something I am trying out as an answer to Rakano Pants decks, but feel free to switch it out for other things. So far I am not completely sold on Teleport in the deck, but it is at least decent. Be careful with your Friendly Wisps. If you can sculpt a turn where you can play a Wisp and then a five strength card in the same turn, it is often worth waiting to do so if the opponent has access to lots of ways to kill or silence the Wisp. There will be games where you should gamble and run it out on turn two, but if you have other things to do it is often correct to wait.
This deck is a very strong choice to ladder with overall as it can have some very aggressive starts that close out games quickly. The deck does struggle against Harsh Rule, so if there are a lot of controlling decks out there you should probably play something else. Those matchups are beatable thanks to Dawnwalker, but it isn’t easy!
I hope you have fun, and maybe even climb some ranks, trying out some of the decks I shared today. Next time I will share some of my more controlling decks if you are in the mood for something different!
Thanks for reading,
Ben
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