Review: Shadowverse (Japanese Hearthstone)

[DSMatticus]

Yeah, it should actually be able to eat more than 5, and is a really obvious two drop to replace Unica either way. Though note that in this turn range an aggro deck is usually hitting you with lots of small damage sources and gets to choose the order of those damage sources, so if you happen not to draw a dire bond you're unlikely to get more than ~1 extra value out of it. I think Mask of the Black Death is better for aggro matchups, because played on curve it slows an aggro deck down by 2-3 turns, and Unica is better for midrange/control matchups, because if you end up winning the fight for board control and your opponent doesn't answer her she can swing net life totals by 4 each turn. Now, that's not actually going to happen - she's going to pull removal and die, but forcing your opponent to blow whatever removal they have available on the weakest creature in your deck can put you at least marginally ahead in those kinds of matchups.

MotBD is probably going to replace my Unica's, and Stolen Life is probably going to replace my Imp Lancers, and then I get to see if Blood Moon, Baphomet, and Dark Airjammer are enough ingredients to make midrange vengeance a viable deck. And if they are, then my wishlist has 9 new legendaries; Maelstrom Serpent, Bloody Mary, and Belphegor.

[OgreBattle]

Out of 15 take two games I won two of them. Goddamn dragoncraft and shadowcraft (I used those decks).

[Josh_Kablack]

Just learned that you can raise your level in <X>craft by beating the easy practice decks repeatedly in solo mode. You can also fulfill the "evolve a follower N times" mission in solo mode.

Out of 15 take two games I won two of them. Goddamn dragoncraft and shadowcraft (I used those decks).

Shadowcraft can often be really strong in Take Two -- it's mana and card efficient and has a bunch of removal and minor card advantage stuff so that a pile of Shadowcraft generally adds up to a passable midrange deck. The issues are that you can get presented with cards that do not offer anywhere near enough removal, and Shadowcraft doesn't necessarily have answers for Take Two's surprisingly common big enders like Bahamut or Prince of Darkness if things go past the midgame.

Dragoncraft is just tearing at itself in Take Two -- you get offered insufficient pieces to build a discard engine and insufficient pieces to ramp to you 6+ cost value critters and you don't have earlygame defense or healing to stop more aggro factions from running over you.

[Whipstitch]

Actually, I'd say that overall Shadowcraft copes with Bahamut specifically a lot better than the other crafts do. Big B is a pain in the ass but Shadowcraft has a lot of silver and bronze removal plus a couple of silver rarity creatures that destroy an enemy followers as a Last Word effect. Khawy in particular is just a good card all around and basically turns Bahamut into a super shitty Themis's Decree until he's removed. I'll grant you that trying to run under Satan before he buries you with card quality can be a real pain in the ass though. It's one of those goofy situations where in constructed the faction can routinely accelerate past people's inevitability with Phantom Howl or clever use of Cerberus but in take 2 you're looking at a pile of random ass cards and realizing that you have jack shit for low rarity face damage.

Edit: Getting tired of playing take 2 and going up against 3 or 4 SC players every time. I had to pick between blood, rune and forest and ended up going first constantly and getting double Alberted to death. Fuck swordcraft, basically.

[Josh_Kablack]

A turn 3 Attendant into a turn 4 Urd is beatable, but only barely.

Tonight I found that the new Dolorblade Warior is whete you want to take that on turn 5. (at least in non neph decks)

[OgreBattle]

Tempest of the Gods is out, get yer free 10 packs

[nockermensch]

Tempest of the Gods is out, get yer free 10 packs

My win rate went up with my shitty swordcraft deck* after the update. It seems I'm ganking people still trying to get used to the new cards. Because I've been hoarding rupies for the new expansion, I got like 35 Tempest of the Gods packs yesterday, and exactly zero (0) Swordcraft legendaries. Feels bad, man.

Spring Cleaning seems to be a trap card of the highest order. I went against two other Erikas using this card since then, and won both matches handly. Spring Cleaning seems to be a great way to randomly destroy your own high value cards.

* My deck is basically the Royal Banner pauper deck, but with two Alberts and one Tsubaki, because I got them for free and why the fuck not. I don't even care when one of the Chief Maids tutors for Albert, because he's just that good.

My ID is 831 479 884

[DSMatticus]

Spring Cleaning seems to be a trap card of the highest order. I went against two other Erikas using this card since then, and won both matches handly. Spring Cleaning seems to be a great way to randomly destroy your own high value cards.

I have no idea why anyone would run Spring Cleaning. I guess it helps you cycle through your deck faster, so if you absolutely need a specific card to win the game... but mostly it just looks like a way to spend mana to trade expensive cards for cheap ones. If that's a thing you frequently find yourself needing to do, give your deck a better curve or make smarter mulligans.

Anyway, Heavenly Aegis is kind of a stupid fucking card. I haven't run into an Aegis deck yet, but just looking at it makes me call bullshit. The current Shadowverse control deck ethos is "take board control, maintain board control, attack when you can, eventually they'll be within lethal so murder them." Heavenly Aegis hardcounters the shit out of that paradigm. Once it hits the table, it's a mad rush to lethal and your ability to keep the board under control is meaningless.

[Josh_Kablack]

Spring Cleaning is a combo-piece for a deck where all the other parts of the combo are in classes other than Swordcraft.

If it draws on an empty hand, then it could almost work an ultra-low curve aggro deck where you played it as the very last card on turn 5 or 6 and then got a couple extra cards. But Avant Blader is probably a better turn 5 play to gain card ratio in any deck even close to that.

[Omegonthesane]

Tarnished Grail is certainly more entertaining than Enstatued Seraph, and if I hadn't been playing for months now it'd also be easier to craft (I mean it is easier to craft but I can't be arsed because I have two Seraphs). Does help that Candelabras stack due to it being one countdown of 3 instead of four countdowns of one.

I feel like I should have some coherent plan involving spamming countdown amulets with Candelabra, but the only deck I've made without net decking that didn't suck amounted to net-decking Daria from memory after fighting it a bunch and drawing two Darias.

EDIT: Also Heavenly Aegis can be targeted with shit like Dance of Death, Piercing Rune, or whatever that card was that was a 3-cost knockoff of Piercing Rune without the price drop reaction to an evolution. Anything that targets a monster when you're actually trying to target the leader. 'Course, if you're reduced to Dance of Death-ing Aegis you may not be on the up and up that round anyway.

[John Magnum]

What kind of deck does Dolorblade Warrior fit in? It feels like he wants to be played when you have something with cool Last Words effects out, but he fits extremely poorly into Nephthys decks. Minthe midrange necromancy stuff, where he's just a high-value 5-drop?

I'm sitting on four thousand vials now and not sure what I wanna craft. Right now, I think the main decks I have in a state where they could be significantly improved by more golds are Elana Havencraft, my Nephthys deck, and whatever the new midrange Blood archetype looks like.

My problem with Elana right now is that I only have one copy of it, which means I much more commonly play it on turn five after tutoring for it with Uriel than on turn three after drawing it. Which sucks intensely. On the plus side, I have a full set of Kels and got an Israfil from a Tempest pack, so that's nice. With Nephthys, I just need additional Mordecais and Death's Breaths. And unfortunately I don't think I actually have enough of the midrange blood skeleton to flesh out the rest with crafting. No Blood Moons, no Maelstrom Serpents, I think maybe one Righteous Devil. Which is a shame, because the deck looks pretty fun.

[Username17]

Spring Cleaning should indeed just be a draw on an empty hand. If you are a deck that empties its hand and wants to draw 2 cards a turn, it's a whole lot like a 1 PP draw 3 - which is insane. Unfortunately, it takes up one of your play slots, and those are super valuable to the kind of banner storm deck that would want it in the first place.

Aegis is worse than you can imagine, even accounting for the fact that you know it's worse than you can imagine. Turns out the way it actually works is that it checks the computer code for a certain kind of interactivity and goes "lol nope" on everything written with that line. So it can attack face through Test of Strength because for whatever reason that effect triggers on each potential attacker, but it can't attack face through a Ward creature because that ability is written to trigger on the defender. It can't be slowed down a Forest of Dreams because that triggers on the attacker, but it can be slowed down by Durandal because that triggers on the defender. I genuinely don't even know if Veight makes a bat when Aegis eats him! Fuck that card. Fuck the designer who thought that was a good idea. That card still isn't all that good because it's basically a shitty Seraph, but holy actual shit! There are more undocumented features of that card than the entire rest of the game combined. That's not a joke. It's ability is entirely based on going through the computer code and checking what order conditional statements are written in. Fuck that card so hard.

Discard Dragon got basically nothing in this set. Dragon Slayer's Price is a giant middle finger to Discard Dragon. The deck needs passive benefits for discarding. It does not need new ways to discard cards. Ramp Dragon got some pretty amazing toys - I pulled a Sybil and an Ouroboros, and those are both amazing. I finally just threw in the towel and dismantled my Discard Dragon and made a mediocre Storm Ramp deck. It's doing pretty well. I hear Israfil is a pretty good card and of course the new Dragoon Scyther is nuts.

As far as my pulls go, I got 2 Belphegors and a playset of Blood Moon, so I may be required by law to make a Vengeance Midrange Combo deck. Other than Moon, Baphomet, Win or Belphegor, Baphomet, win, I don't know what the deck's gameplan is supposed to be. I also got a playset of Tarnished Grails. I don't have any Seraphs, but I guess I should try to put together a budget Candelabra deck. I also got a single copy of Minty, but I don't know how to put together Necromancy shadow and don't want to start Crafting until I do.

I tried Minty out in Take Two, and I can confirm that she does not work the way she says she does and is a lot worse. I am not sure how she actually works though. She does not reduce Necromancy costs to zero, but your Shadows don't go down when Necromancy effects activate. Notably Ghostly Grasp will not let you target a Toughness 2+ creature if you have 7 or less Shadows. I don't know if this is because they didn't have Minty tell cards like Deathbrand and Grasp that they always have "enough shadows" and are legal plays or whether she's just rebating you shadows as you spend them or what. I don't know if she will let mandatory Necromancy effects like Goblin Zombie or Madame Lich go off with less than the requisite amount in your bank account. I also don't know if she works fast enough to have repeated necromancy effects like Phantom Howl or Eachtar work the way you obviously want them to.

Speaking of Take Two, Swordcraft is a lot more balanced now. Which is to say that it gives you a bunch of fucking useless Hobo Frogs instead of Floral Fencers. It will take a while before people figure out that Swordcraft is a lot less good and people will still overplay it for quite a while.

-Username17

[Archmage]

Dirt Rune needed a win condition. I think they arguably have one now. Thanks, Hulking Giant!

[Josh_Kablack]

Did some crafting and am running a janky Support Cannon deck. It sorely needs some 4 drops. But I don't want anything that requires an officer interaction to be good. Obviously Gawain is the long term answer-but I'm still far away from that.

[Username17]

Did some crafting and am running a janky Support Cannon deck. It sorely needs some 4 drops. But I don't want anything that requires an officer interaction to be good. Obviously Gawain is the long term answer-but I'm still far away from that.

Floral Fencer and Swordsman are both decent evolution sinks despite not being Commanders. Jeno the werewolf dude is quite effective both at clearing the board and at getting himself killed so you have space for Commanders if you want to play a 4-drop and don't want to spend an Evo point. But really, the 4 drop you want is Uriel, because that puts Support Cannon into your hand. Once you've played Support Cannon, the 4 Drop you want to draw is Latham, Vanguard Captain, because a 4 mana 4/3 Commander is fucking awesome.

The big problem with Commander Sword is how many of its ideal cards are Golds that you probably liquefied a long time ago. Gemstaff Commander? Latham? Yes Please!

-Username17

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

Fuck the designer who thought that was a good idea. That card still isn't all that good because it's basically a shitty Seraph, but holy actual shit!

I dunno. Seraph demands that you sacrifice your T8 entirely to win the game on T12, and any opponent with banish amulets (which is most control decks) can fuck with your win condition. Aegis demands that you spend your T9 playing a big motherfucking creature to win the game around T12 unless your opponent has more wards than you have removal, and your opponent can't interact with it at all. Realistically, I think both represent similar levels of inevitability while Seraph requires you pay an entire turn for no benefit while Aegis requires you to "pay" having an 8/8 on the board forever.

As far as my pulls go, I got 2 Belphegors and a playset of Blood Moon, so I may be required by law to make a Vengeance Midrange Combo deck. Other than Moon, Baphomet, Win or Belphegor, Baphomet, win, I don't know what the deck's gameplan is supposed to be.

I lucked into absolutely zero blood gold/legendaries, so I was spared putting any thought whatsoever into how a hypothetical midrange vengeance deck might look.

I think the two big win conditions are:
1) Blood Moon, Baphomet, Maelstrom Serpent.
2) Belphegor, Bloody Mary.

Cards that you're going to run:
1) Dire Bond. This is probably a control-lite type of midrange to begin with, and Bloody Mary turns Dire Bond into 6 face damage.

2) Dark Airjammer. If you play Dark Airjammer in vengeance and it pulls two Nightmares, that's 5 mana to put a 3/5, 4/2, and 4/2 on the table.

3) Diabolic Drain definitely and Revelation probably.

That's a moderately expensive deck to finish. Maelstrom Serpent and Bloody Mary are legendaries. Dire Bond, Diabolic Drain, and Revelation are golds. And I'm not sure placeholders will be anywhere near as effective as the cards themselves. Bloody Mary is an entire missing secondary combo, and Maelstrom is the craziest Baphomet play by far.

[John Magnum]

You win the turn after you play a Seraph, not four turns after, because you spend the next turn playing some combination of Healing Prayers, Hallowed Dogmas, IDK if Seraph runs Master Sages but in principle they could, etc. It does mean that a "safe turn" for playing Aegis is just one where you don't lose outright the next turn, whereas Seraph requires that plus having a bunch of Countdown acceleration in hand.

How does Belphegor + Bloody Mary actually work? I assume it deals damage equal to the difference between your current HP and 10 to the enemy, so if you're at 18 it hits them for 8. But maybe it just instantly kills them if you play those two while out of vengeance.

If Dark Airjammer draws a Nightmare, they're 2/2s, not 4/2s. The +2/+0 in Vengeance is a Fanfare. Blood Wolves seem better, since they're still 2/1 Storms but they don't hit you in the face when Airjammer calls them in.

[DSMatticus]

You win the turn after you play a Seraph, not four turns after, because you spend the next turn playing some combination of Healing Prayers, Hallowed Dogmas

Sure, you're going to try to accel Seraph once it hits the table (and could plausibly get it to go off on the turn after you play it, though I think T10 is more realistic than T9), but drawing a bunch of amulet accel and not playing it has its own opportunity cost alongside the opportunity cost of simply playing Seraph; that's 2-3 cards you drew over the course of the game and, for all intents and purposes, never got to play.

The Seraph deck promises it will set 2-3 draws on fire, that it won't do anything that affects the board on T8, and that it will ask you if you'd like to play Odin (or any other amulet banish you happen to have) 1-2 times. The Aegis deck promises that it will try to match you card for card and blow for blow on T1-T8 and then play Super Mordecai on T9. I'm... generally okay with the former. I do not care at all for the latter.

How does Belphegor + Bloody Mary actually work? I assume it deals damage equal to the difference between your current HP and 10 to the enemy, so if you're at 18 it hits them for 8. But maybe it just instantly kills them if you play those two while out of vengeance.

If the translation is accurate, then it's just loop until the game ends because your opponent is dead. Belphegor does damage to you until you're in vengeance, Bloody Mary prevents damage to you during your turn and sends it to the other guy instead. But that's a big if, and I can't tell you. In this case, translation and implementation are different things done by different people, so... yeah. Who knows?

If Dark Airjammer draws a Nightmare, they're 2/2s, not 4/2s. The +2/+0 in Vengeance is a Fanfare. Blood Wolves seem better, since they're still 2/1 Storms but they don't hit you in the face when Airjammer calls them in.

I knew there were a lot of effects that put cards into play without triggering their fanfare, but I was not aware the mechanism behind that was that fanfare literally only procced when cards were played normally from hand. Dark Airjammer is basically the T5 equivalent of a floral fencer that runs on vengeance instead of evo. Considering that the way you're aiming to get into vengeance is by giving up 3 mana and a card on turn 3 or turn 4, that's... really underwhelming.

You could play Veight (4/3 total value) and Mastema (6/6 total value) or you could play Blood Moon (0/0 total value) and Dark Airjammer (roughly 7/8 total value at best, worse if your deck runs any 1 point followers). Sure, if you're already committed to playing Blood Moon then Dark Airjammer is better than Mastema - but it's still worse than tearing up Blood Moon and playing Veight and Mastema instead. I kind of thought after TotG hit you'd be able to put together a midrange vengeance beatdown deck that happened to have some combo pieces in it, but it looks more like vengeance is mostly a combo deck.

[John Magnum]

https://shadowverse.com/news/important/news-0054

So, there's some Known Bugs about abilities being improperly described, but nothing about Minthe, Belphegor, or Heavenly Aegis. And I'm not sure how the Blood Moon description makes any difference one way or the other, unless there's ways to bring amulets into play without triggering their Fanfare abilities. Maybe it's just supposed to be clarifying that the Vengeance buff only lasts as long as the amulet's in play?

[Username17]

Sure, you're going to try to accel Seraph once it hits the table (and could plausibly get it to go off on the turn after you play it, though I think T10 is more realistic than T9)

Seraph isn't hypothetical theorycraft, Enstatued Seraph came out two expansions ago and it's a well established Combo Control deck with a high win rate. Seraph decks almost always go off on turn 9 and never go off after turn 10. You beat them by either randomly having Odin (or Lightning Blast if you are Dragon) in your hand or having lethal on the board on Turn 8 so Eris cannot afford to play Seraph in the first place. Aegis can't even be played until turn 9 and just much much slower. It can't be snuffed out by Odin and doesn't require you to play Candelabras, Healing Prayers, and Dogmas in your deck, and it lets you play Themis' Decree on Turn 6, and if you still have an evo point you can zap an enemy follower for 10. But Turn 11 is just a lot later than Turn 9. It's the difference between "D-Shift needs to be having a slow day" and "you can't beat D-Shift." Also, keeping an evo point in reserve until Turn 9 is nothing like free, some of Haven's best removal comes in the form of evolving creatures.

I don't know what Aegis is supposed to beat. It's an inevitability deck that loses to literally every combo deck. It loses to Seraph, it loses to Silverbolt, it probably even loses to joke decks like OTK Newt and Jungle Anomaly. Giving your opponent 11 turns to kill you is a long ass time when your win condition is just "play a big dumb creature and bludgeon your opponent to death." If you and your opponent agree to sit there playing fatties and removal at each other until one of you runs out of cards, the Aegis is going to make you win eventually. But I'm not even entirely sure that your win rate is particularly good even in that case, because if your opponent just has more card draw and healing and bigger fatties they can just race you. I could very easily see a scenario where you face Ramp Dragon and simply lose to haymakers before you can land enough haymakers of your own.

I knew there were a lot of effects that put cards into play without triggering their fanfare, but I was not aware the mechanism behind that was that fanfare literally only procced when cards were played normally from hand.

Yep. That's why fanfare creatures other than Urd are so bad in Nephthys decks.

You could play Veight (4/3 total value) and Mastema (6/6 total value) or you could play Blood Moon (0/0 total value) and Dark Airjammer (roughly 7/8 total value at best, worse if your deck runs any 1 point followers).

That's not a fair or meaningful comparison. Blood Moon gives you 3 turns of being able to play weird overpowered shit, of which Dark Airjammer is just one. Remember that it activates Storm on Dark Generals, so in magical Christmas land where you pull two Blood Wolves with the Air Jammer, you could Storm for 4 on turn 4 with a General and then Storm for 4 again with two Blood Wolves from the Airjammer on Turn 5. It's Turn 5, your opponent is half dead and you have lethal on the board. Or just turn 4 Belphegor, and you have a 4/4 on turn 4 and a full hand of cards.

Magical Christmas land Blood Moon draws are nuts. The big problem I'm having is the massive anti-synergy that is Baphomet and Dark Airjammer. Baphomet can let you buy Maelstrom Serpents on layaway, but if you get Baphomets out of Dark Airjammer you not only get lousy 2/1s, but you don't get the card draw. I don't know what package you want. Both seem very strong, but they step on each others' dicks pretty bad.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

I will admit that I play primarily control blood, which is a deck archetype for which going lethal after the play orbs are already full is often the plan. Seraph Havencraft is a bad matchup, but it is a somewhat deceptively interactive strategy in that when I see Eris's dumb face I know I should - and probably can - go face a little harder than I would against other decks. Finding those combo pieces and holding onto them is an opportunity cost which my deck can exploit if I play smart and get lucky. But Aegis is just a regular deck on T1 through T8 and then on T9 it plays the immovable object. Seraph may, in fact, already be such a good matchup against control blood that Aegis can't do better. Aegis may be weaker than Seraph in most other matchups such that it never gets played as anything but a meme deck. But the card will continue to infuriate me simply on the basis that as a matter of building and playing the deck you really don't have to make any concessions whatsoever for your inevitability. Seraph tells me my opponent made sacrifices and if I change the way I play my deck during that particular match I can exploit them for minimally better odds. Aegis tells me I'm playing the wrong deck entirely.

Magical Christmas land Blood Moon draws are nuts. The big problem I'm having is the massive anti-synergy that is Baphomet and Dark Airjammer. Baphomet can let you buy Maelstrom Serpents on layaway, but if you get Baphomets out of Dark Airjammer you not only get lousy 2/1s, but you don't get the card draw. I don't know what package you want. Both seem very strong, but they step on each others' dicks pretty bad.

I'm pretty sure the answer is Baphomet. The wishlist of coincidences you're asking Santa for is smaller, the final value is a lot higher, and Dark Airjammer puts some other constraints on the 1-drops and 2-drops you want that may fuck with what you're trying to do in the rest of your deck even beyond simply Baphomet. If you really go the Dark Airjammer into Bloodwolf route, for example, then you're playing an awfully aggro-ish deck that can't decide whether or not it wants 1-drops. That's straight-up blasphemy.

[OgreBattle]

Dirt Rune needed a win condition. I think they arguably have one now. Thanks, Hulking Giant!

Theorycrafting abounds for a more aggressive earthrite deck:
https://shadowverse.gamepress.gg/deck/e ... eck-gameai

Halo golem looks great, will probably replace the fissure bombs in my deck.
Illusionist and Nightfall Mage also seem solid, though eats up earth sigils.

I guess I'll spend my gold on Tempest packs hoping for a Hulking Giant playset

[Josh_Kablack]

What kind of deck does Dolorblade Warrior fit in? It feels like he wants to be played when you have something with cool Last Words effects out, but he fits extremely poorly into Nephthys decks. Minthe midrange necromancy stuff, where he's just a high-value 5-drop?.

Non-Neph lichcraft. You run Lurching Corpses, Attendents, Urd, Hells Unleashers plus Dolorblade, Necroassain, as your framework then you flesh out with some removal, som 1 and 2 drops and some high end finishers. You get a lich on the first turn you can evolve, and on a good draw you get another lich plus a buffed dolorblade on the next turn. You could probably tweak your options to include a Tyrant Combo package as the finisher for when midgame value doesn't win it,, but I don't have the parts for that so I've just been running "pile of my better cards" for the rest of that deck.

****************

Now my question is if there's anything interesting I can do with the pair of Dark Jeanne I pulled as my TotG Havencraft Legendaries?

[John Magnum]

So just... a Nephthys deck without an actual Nephthys in it, where you trade out the overwhelmingly powerful Nep turns for the option to include 1- and 5-drops. Sounds pretty workable if you don't have the card.

---

Over in Runecraft, my Daria deck is still going pretty strong. I haven't really made any changes to it, except for swapping out an Ice Golem for Enchanted Sword and dropping a Flame Destroyer for a Chimera. Chimera seems pretty good, 4/4 is still a respectable body and having an immediate board impact often gives it pretty good value. It's nice for punching through midsize Wards.

I have two Mutagenic Bolts from Tempest packs, but I'm not sure what if anything I wanna swap out for them. There's just so many cards that could go in Runecraft's goodstuff.dek, it's ridiculous.

[Username17]

So just... a Nephthys deck without an actual Nephthys in it, where you trade out the overwhelmingly powerful Nep turns for the option to include 1- and 5-drops. Sounds pretty workable if you don't have the card.

The Nephthys deckbuilding constraints are pretty harsh. You can't run 1, 5, or 6 cost followers at all, and you can't run 7 cost followers other than Khawy or perhaps Immortal Thane and you definitely can't run any 8 cost followers other than Nephthys and Mordecai. Finally, if you want to do Nephthys Control rather than Nephthys Midrange, you are completely unwilling to take any chance at all of "missing" Mordecai on your Neph turn, which means that you have to choose 2, 3, or 4 and replace all of your followers with that cost with removal spells (Nephthys Midrange doesn't care as much and often simply wins on turn 7 because curving Lurching Corpse into Attendant into Urd is quite good).

Similarly, the Aggro Shadow deckbuilding constraints are pretty harsh. You need early plays and you need to feed your Shadow Reaper. And that's about it. You're not really interested in anything that costs 5 or more mana unless its name is Cerberus. Yes, you can look at 1 cost creatures, but mostly you're giving the hairy eyeball to the same 2, 3, 4 creatures that Nephthys is considering. And then just settling on Sextons and Bone Chimeras because you need to feed the reaper.

Now that Midrange is a thing, you can get a lot funkier. While you still don't care about 9 cost dudes, you have a lot of working space to include cards that just don't see play in either Nephthys or Aggro Shadow. Did you know that Shadowcraft has 6 cost followers it could put in decks? It's true!

The really interesting one is Minty. Apparently while there are some undocumented features (or "bugs" if you will), Minty works on Tyrant exactly the way she reads like she would. So... your opponent absolutely has to kill her as soon as she hits the board or you will play and evolve a 13/13 Storm dragon on turn 6. That deck has all kinds of cool shit it can throw around that doesn't fit into a Cerberus or Nephthys deck.

I didn't play in this game, but it looks legit

There's just so many cards that could go in Runecraft's goodstuff.dek, it's ridiculous.

I think that's going to be the backbone of Ginger Rune. Your end game is that you have 3 Zeus, 3 Lucifer, an Israfil, and a Bahamut in your deck and when you play Ginger you on average will be able to put 3 of those into play in one turn. If your opponent doesn't have Themis or Bahamut they just lose. And that in turn means that you don't give a shit about pumping up Spellboosts to high values and you don't need to spam 1 and 2 cost spells. The only spellboost spells in your deck are Fate's Hand and maybe Fiery Embrace. The Ginger package is 14 cards that have no impact before turn 7, and the rest of the deck is just goodstuff.dek geared for keeping the board clear.

Because Daria, D-Shift, and Earthrite have very exacting requirements about what kinds of cards they possibly care about, the amount of Runecraft cards that people forget exist because they have no home in any decks is even higher than Shadow. Secrets of Erasmus, First Curse, Flame Witch!