Been stuck in Shadow for a while, but finally reached Gold today! I've been experimenting alot with aggro war decks and deception decks. I found a beginner Deception deck on the Gods Unchained discord, and I'm currently using it after replacing missing cards with cards I owned. I'll be sharing my edited deck today.
The deck started humble and didn't have many good cards, just the beginner set. As I played and got more packs, I slowly changed the decks bit by bit, replacing cards with better alternatives. I recently changed it up again and had considerably more success with it, so I think it is worthy to post about. So far I haven't spent any money in game, but I did spend some GODS that I earned, on some cards for a aggro deck ( which didn't work D: ) But some cards I bought for that deck I was able to use for this deck as well, so thats nice.
My recent plays with deception above, these are all variations of the same deck, with some cards changed between each one.
Image below shows my previous deck, it worked but it was really tough, with one game even taking 21 turns to complete 😨
Deck Analysis:
If you wanna see it yourself in GUdecks, here is the link: https://gudecks.com/decks/GU_1_2_CAJCBhCBhCBlCCRCCmCDdCDuCEBCEBCEDCEXCEwCEwHADHAEHAEHAFHAFHAJHAJHBVHBWHBWHBZHBbHBcICHICHICq?godPowers=101308&creator=AbyssalSoul&userId=1666329&archetype=Other%20Deception
Hero Power: Orfeo's Distraction
Good for
-controlling the board, killing creatures with that 1 damage
-bypassing Frontline creatures
-giving your creatures hidden for a turn ( good for things like Jinxblade Duelist)
How to win with this deck:
- Set up Jinxblade Duelist, it can gain a lot of health and deal alot of damage if left unchecked.
- Vault Vagabond/ Ludia's Dedicant to steal the opponents cards, and hope theres a win condition there. (Win condition: cards which can win the game, like Jinxblade Duelist) This also gives you more cards to work with which is always good.
- Control the board and overwhelm the opponent with all your creatures. Spells like Rapture Dance, Spiked Tea and Poisoned Dagger all allow you to gain Board control.
All of these methods require you to have control over the board, so it's important to know how.
How to gain Board Control?
Make value trades. Use a 1 mana card to destroy a 2 mana card, basically use lower mana cards to deal with higher mana cards if possible. You gain "free" mana, in a sense. Because you can make use of more mana than your opponent, you have a higher chance to win.
Clear the opponent's board. Sometimes you can also choose to keep the opponent's board clean, even if you are making unfavorable mana choices. Some decks have no answer to when they have no cards on the board. This is usually done when you have spells to clear their cards, instead of sacrificing your creatures to kill their creatures. In my deck, Umber Arrow is a good example. For 2 mana, you can control an enemy creature with 2 attack or less for a turn. You can then use this creature to attack the other opponent creatures. For 2 mana, you have dealt damage to 2 enemy creatures, weakening them or even killing them. This frees up your other mana to summon creatures.
Card replacements:
Ludia's Dedicant - can be replaced with Bedeviled Shadow. Both have the same stats, but Ludia's Dedicant has the added bonus of coping a card from the opponent's deck into your hand when you hero power.
Inconspicuous Carriage - replace with any Frontline (with similar mana) with high stats.
Guild Enforcer - not required but recommended. Their armor got nerfed from 2 to 1 but its still useful. Frontline hero with Shield means your opponent will probably have to spend more mana than you to deal with it, giving you a mana advantage to set up your other creatures. Theres also a slight chance that they cant do anything to it, so you win :D
Irreplacable Cards:
Rapture Dance - Recommended to have 2 so you have a higher chance to draw it. Really useful when the opponent has a full board, dealing 6 damage to each enemy creature. The only hard Board Clear card in the deck. If you have any card that fulfils this function then you could probably work without this card.
Frontline cards - kind of a 'duh' card but yeah. You need frontline cards to protect your win conditions. Cards like Jinxblade Duelist, Ludia's Dedicant and Vault Vagabond are pretty frail, so try not to put them down when you see a enemy creature capable of killing them next turn on the board. Putting a Frontline card in front stalls the enemy for a while, which is HUGE for cards like Jinxblade Duelist.
If you wanna see the deception deck I used when I first started, feel free to search me up on GUdecks. My name is the same as here, AbyssalSoul. Go to GUdecks > Meta > Player Stats and input my name. If you scroll all the way down, you will see my recent matches. go to around page 20 or so, I think thats where I first started experimenting with Deception decks. They're really fun to play with.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading! That concludes my post for today, I'm considering picking up a Death deck in the future, but I don't own many of the important cards for good Death decks. Zombie death looks fun, I've played against a few and it seems like an interesting deck to play against. Looking forward to the weekend event, hopefully I can earn another DO pack :D
Speaking of weekends, that reminds me:
Merry Christmas everyone!!!
Disclaimer: I am still learning and improving my deck, its not a guaranteed use and rank up. Do customise the deck based on what your have and experiment with it :) comment if you see any glaring mistake that I missed out :D
All images are taken from Gods Unchained/ GUdecks website, cover page edited by me on Canva.
In reading through your thought process for card selection, have you considered Barricade (2-cost 1/4 Wall) or Barbed Portcullis (3-cost 2/4 Wall) instead of Shield Maiden and/or Hunt Warden? Much of what you describe sounds like a control deck, and extra sources of Frontline seems to fit into the strategy you've described.
Also, in having more Frontline creatures, your blocking will be more reliable and less vulnerable to Confused. Nature creatures, specifically, can get a free "lock-on" to your Frontline creatures if there aren't more than one. Spiked Tea (AoE Confuse) might even be worth increasing to two copies, at that point.
I'm curious to hear what you think of these suggestions.
Welcome to the community, and congrats on making it to Gold! :D
Hello :)
I'll be honest, I havent even thought about using them before 😅 I always thought not being able to attack means theyre not very useful. But your comment got me thinking about their viability, and they do seem to be a good fit to my deck. I'm definitely switching out Shield Maiden for Barricade, though I'm a bit sceptical about Barbed Portcullis for Hunt Warden, since I use Hunt Warden sometimes to trade and/or to go face. I only have one copy of the cards I really want to defend with frontline (Jinxblade Duelist, Ludia's Dedicant etc) so I'm not able to draw them reliably most times. I'll try adding them and see how it goes!
Btw I played a few games earlier and there were a few games where the opponent surrendered on turn 1?? Why would they do that I am very confused lol. I suspect its because of the weekend event but is it really worth for them to give up their rank like that D:
Because you're using Orfeo's Deception (1 DMG), you can often "trade" the Wall with anything that attacks it unless the attacker has Regen or they heal it. So, while your Hunt Warden might be better to hang onto until you have dupes of the Deception creatures you'd like to emphasize, switching to walls for more Frontline shielding is worth considering.
You could start by running one of each (Wall and Warden) to see which one you use more, then commit to whatever fits your playstyle better.
Regarding the turn 1 surrender, a few things could be happening: Wrong deck (seriously, I've done this when trying to squeeze in wins for Running the Gauntlet before the deadline), garbage hand even after mulligans (more common in lower MMR where players are still figuring our their mana curve), or actual deranking.
Deranking for Weekend Ranked is a widespread issue that will eventually need to be addressed, but for now it's just something that's inadvertently encouraged by the way rewards are tabulated. With an X out of 25 metric for measurement, dropping to a rank you can get more wins in a row at means more rewards.
Hey there, sorry for the inactivity, was kinda busy the past few days 😅
I'll try running one of each (wall and warden) as well as only walls no warden and see how it goes! I have some $GODS now so I am also considering buying some cards from the marketplace, will probably buy some of the dupes that i need in the future.
Thank you so much for the tips!! Greatly appreciate it :D
No need to apologize, and any time!
Good luck with your test, and let us know what you end up deciding when you get the chance :)
!discovery 20 , Beautiful post, I'm glad it's put with the TAG #PGM , I hope this little help in terms of votes makes you happy :) I hope you'll continue to use the #PGM tag. !PGM
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Hi, thanks for the PGM tokens! I'll continue making posts and tagging them with #PGM :)
Thank you very much for your support, I hope to see you using the !PGM command soon, with the new update you only need 10 PGMs in stake to use the command!
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