High Tier Scrappy / Shadowverse

"Its dully glowing eyes betray no feeling, and even screams of agony cannot reach its ears. Controlled by a witch, the creature uses its wicked horns to make a game of wreaking havoc."

— Rhinoceroach flavor text.

Given the changing metagame with each new expansion, various cards and decks shift in and out of these tiers, being hated for differing reasons. Cards are sorted by format to demonstrate context behind nerfs, even if they had debuted earlier.

Bear in mind that nerfs made for cards in Rotation at the time can be reverted when they enter the Unlimited format. Also, a lot of old nerfs (Classic to Omen of Storms) were reverted in early 2023 in preparation for the Custom Rotation Cup (where players can pit decks from different Rotation formats against each other) and most of them stuck, as testament to the Power Creep that's affected Unlimited.

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Classic

• Path to Purgatory is a neutral amulet that hits all enemy followers (and the enemy player) for 6 damage provided that the player has 30 or more shadows^note Cards or tokens that have been destroyed, discarded, or used spells. While meant to be Difficult, but Awesome, it is also the basis of many decks which can use cards that generate many tokens at once to quickly stock up their shadow count, allowing the card to go online much earlier than expected and destroying any chance the opponent could have at retaliating. It was a menace in the Classic and Darkness Evolved formats of the game until Rise of Bahamut brought the titular Bahamut which cleared the entire board of existing Purgatory copies while also being resilient enough to withstand 2 blows from Purgatory.
  
  Of these variants, Forestcraft receives the most hate mainly because not only can it easily stock up shadows for Purgatory, given how many fairies it generates, it can also kill the opponent the usual way through battle, especially via Rhinoceroach. Destroying their followers stocks up the shadows for Purgatory, but ignoring the followers means their board will kill you. During the game's debut up till Darkness Evolved launched, it also had Homecoming at 5pp for board control and Harvest Festival at 2pp to easily refill its hand. Those two cards were nerfed to their current costs (7 and 4 respectively) to downplay the dominance of Purgatory Forest.
• Rhinoceroach is a consistent trump card of Forestcraft since the beginning of the game. A 2pp 1/1 with Storm looks mediocre on paper, but its power scales according to the number of cards played that turn. Given Forestcraft's penchant for playing many cheap cards in a turn - some of them free with the use of the right cards - along with bouncing it with Nature's Guidance to give it an additional attack with even more power, the Roach combo became infamous for its ability to deliver large amounts of burst damage. The worst part is that it can be splashed into nearly every form of Forestcraft deck, meaning that as long as your opponent is playing Forestcraft, you are hardly safe from the Roach. Despite Cygames trying to create different ways to play Forestcraft or create new archetypes or win conditions, Roach still continued to be the defining card for Forestcraft, and players heaved a sigh of relief when they learned it would be excluded from the Rotation format.
• Sea Queen Otohime was hated in the first two formats of the game due to her ability to simply flood the board at a moment's notice. Her Bodyguards were not very impressive but were annoying to take out in an efficient manner. Not helping matters was that they would then be buffed with Sage Commander to create a fearsome source of burst damage. The best way to defeat Otohime's board was with Themis's Decree, but in comparison, you've expended one card to bait out one of the strongest boardwipes in the game, and there's the possibility of the Sword player using another Otohime to instantly rebuild the board they just lost. Because Cygames was reluctant to nerf legendary cards until later in the game's age, their response was to give many other crafts a medium-strength boardwipe that was enough to extinguish her and her Bodyguards in one shot in Rise of Bahamut. This move diminished her infamy and play rate, but also sparked a Lensman Arms Race of increasing board resilience among other crafts that would push down the popularity of Sword's board-centric playstyle.

Darkness Evolved

• The introduction of Crystalia Tia and Elf Knight Cynthia opened up the "Tempo Forest" deck. Tia's combo effect resulted in a really big ward to surmount who was also evolved, allowing a Forest deck to contest the board without spending any evolution points, while Cynthia provided a lasting buff that turned harmless 1/1 Fairies into 2/1 Goddamned Bats or worse, on top of leaving Fairies behind when she evolves. That, and Elf Girl Liza also provided protection to the board to prevent it from wiping to something like Angelic Barrage, which began to see increasing popularity as a Neutral anti-Fairy boardwipe. When all else fails, the Tempo Forest deck still could still use the dreaded Rhinoceroach combo to end games. The use of Tempo Forest only mellowed out in subsequent expansions due to Cygames adding stronger cards in other crafts or designing Forest cards that encourage different play styles, fading into obscurity before merging with new cards to form aggro Forest many months later.
• Haven was also one of the most-played crafts in the format, contending with Tempo and Purgatory Forest for popularity. This was due to Haven receiving enough resources to assemble three different decks, creating a Confusion Fu factor when deciding mulligans.
  • First and cheapest is Storm Haven, heralded with the introduction of Winged Sentinel Garuda and Beastcall Aria. Aria was the prime Countdown card for Haven, as it created a 4/4 and 2/1 with Storm three turns later, effectively serving as a very effective amalgamation of Pinion Prayer and Beastly Vow. The player could curve Aria into Divine Birdsong for a large burst of followers on turn 5, and many opponents lacked the resources to deal with all three at once. Garuda himself also shows up as a finisher, effectively triggering any leftover Countdown amulet on top of doing 3 damage to the enemy leader, even if played on his own.
  • Elana's Prayer gives +1/+1 to all the player's followers whenever their leader is healed. Even if they heal for 0 due to the health cap, so intentionally not attacking the opponent will not stop this card. Should the Haven player land this card early, they can proceed to heal off any damage they took from aggressive decks while slowly curb-stomping the opposing player with supersized followers. If two or more of these are present, expect to see their followers scale too quickly for your creatures to handle. And this was also a time where most classes didn't have the ability to destroy enemy boards effectively, making the best answer to Elana Haven... another Haven player.
  • The third of the triumvirate is a deck defined by Enstatued Seraph, a Countdown amulet that replaces itself every turn with another amulet, with the last amulet being an Instant-Win Condition. Since the effect that triggers the next amulet or the match victory is a Last Word effect, destroying the amulets only makes things worse, there's only one legendary follower who can banish it, and the only other option of getting rid of it safely is an Earth Rite Runecraft card. This was a control-style deck that stalled to turn 8, where it would play the Seraph and proceed to win the next turn with three Countdown-reduction effects. Given the abundance of defense and healing in Haven, the only way this plan would fall apart is if it didn't draw Seraph in time, or its win condition was dismantled by the above answers.
  • And that's not all — sometimes a Haven player can mesh the two together, so a deck that features the some defining features of one archetype can suddenly play the elements of another. Most popular was the Elana-Seraph hybrid, which had the features of a midrange with loads of healing that could switch to a control-oriented finisher if the going gets tough.

Rise of Bahamut

Constructed

• Daria, Dimensional Witch^note who's the same person depicted on Dimension Shift, by the way quickly became the centerpiece of the popular tempo Rune deck which was made possible shortly after the release of Rise of Bahamut. Like many of the followers in the deck, she can be spellboosted to reduce her cost, made a lot easier with new cards like Craig and Clarke who specifically double-boost followers, allowing her to be played as early as turn 4. When she does, the player draws a fresh hand of 5 cards - that are also spellboosted 5 times, usually meaning a free Fate's Hand for more supplies or free Emmylou and Oglers and 1-point Blade Mages to keep up the aggressive pressure. Being only a little slower than full aggro decks but possessing followers sturdy enough to withstand cheap boardwipes allowed Daria aggro to dominate the game,^note and for cheap, too - other than 3 Darias, the rest of the deck is bronzes and silvers barring a couple of Levis becoming one of the most played decks during its debut format. In subsequent formats, due to the increasing pace of the game, Daria instead fell into disuse due to the deck relying too much on drawing the perfect sequence of followers and failing to keep the pace with more aggressive decks, and then saw another resurgence by Chronogenesis in Rotation (see below) due to the lack of powerful early boardwipes that punished its overextension.
  
  Many say it's not entirely Daria's fault of Rune being so strong, but that of Timeworn Mage Levi. On evolution he gains the full +2/+2 stats and gives the player a cheap-to-cast 3 damage from Crimson Sorcery, allowing him to effectively do the job of Dragon Warrior at 1 less play point and 1 less defense.^note Normally, cards with a beneficial evolve ability only gained +1/+1 or didn't even get a stat boost during evolution. The Crimson Sorcery can even be saved for later to deliver game-ending player damage. During his debut in Darkness Evolved, his strength was notable, but Runecraft's viability was lacking outside of Dimension Shift so his being well above the power curve garnered little attention. But Rise of Bahamut then introduced Piercing Rune, allowing for an evolving Levi to combo with it and potentially take out three enemy followers for a total of 4 play points. For a player going second and pulling off that combo on turn 4, it is an incredible swing in tempo that is difficult to recover from. While this combo got nerfed with Piercing Rune reducing to 2 play points instead of 1, Levi remains untouched as an auto-include in every Rune deck until he rotated out.
• Recall Rhinoceroach from above? Imagine the Roach combo taken up to eleven with a deck named "Miracle Roach", which uses Feena to create a free Goblin Mage which can then search up a Rhinoceroach and basically ensure the combo goes off as early as turn 7 — and in extreme cases, defeats an undefended opponent at full health. To rein in the dominant Miracle Roach deck, Goblin Mage was nerfed to also be able to tutor 1-cost followers, forcing a Forest deck to sacrifice more of their early game if they wanted to replicate the same kind of consistency of the Miracle Roach deck.
• Albert, Levin Saber is one of Swordcraft's most impactful legendary cards, quickly becoming a staple in every Swordcraft deck imaginable. Being a 5-cost 3/5 with Storm allows him to put on very strong aggressive pressure with the help of an evolve, as a 5/7 on turn 5 generally forces the opponent to perform a few unfavorable trades or waste their turn on hard removal to deal with him. Should the game go late, he becomes a godly topdeck or finisher, as for 9 play points he also gains the ability to attack twice and temporarily take no combat damage, letting him finish off a weakened opponent from nowhere or clean up strong followers without a scratch on him. During the late Bahamut format, the ladder was plagued with a deck that focuses on drawing him as soon as possible and using his aggressive prowess to force the opponent on the defensive if not outright kill them. Due to Power Creep in subsequent expansions, though, Albert quickly slipped out of this trope, turning from a menace of ranked play to one of the few crutches keeping Swordcraft relevant, especially due to the midrange Sword deck not receiving a lot of interesting tools in Tempest, though his ubiquity in all Swordcraft decks make many players wary of being at 6 or 10 health by turn 9.
• Sahaquiel summons a Neutral minion from your hand, gives it Rush, and returns it at the end of your turn. During her debut, she wasn't too remarkable, having only the ability to effectively get a heal off Lucifer or assassinate things with Bahamut. Every other expensive Neutral follower had a Fanfare they'd miss out on and wouldn't synergize very well with Sahaquiel. Tempest of the Gods, though, introduced Israfil and Zeus, giving Sahaquiel enough things to work with to be one of the factors for Neutral Ramp Dragon to become one of the most powerful decks in that format. The Sahaquiel-Israfil combo is of great nuisance, though, as it allows the player to clear a field of weakened followers without so much as expending an evolve, which factored into Dragon of that time conserving evolves to trigger Zell. The Saha-Isra combo would go on to be a staple in many a Neutral-based control deck, and their combined power would come to a head in the very slowed-down Rotation format as an easy boardwipe undoing efforts at board control.

Take Two

• Gourmet Emperor Khaiza is a neutral silver 3pp 2/2 who generates an Ultimate Carrot on Fanfare. The carrot itself is an infinitely regenerating 2pp 2/2, and works wonderfully in helping a player expend unused pp in developing their board. The Ultimate Carrot will generate a lot of value, making trades that would endanger its player's other followers, and the endless regeneration can ensure a player outgrinds the opponent until they banish or transform it. And because Khaiza's a silver follower, he's also rather easy to encounter as a neutral card pick.

Tempest of the Gods

It is that this point where Cygames started going overboard with designing deliberately overpowered cards to encourage underused deck types. How bad was it? A huge bulk of nerfed cards are from this set and the next — both Tempest and Wonderland have at least twelve nerfed cards each, while the number of nerfs in other sets barely reach a third of that number.

• Heavenly Aegis. It's immune to almost everything in the game. It can't be damaged, destroyed, banished or removed from the board in any way once it comes out. It comes with 8 attack, so it'll run over pretty much everything. Basically, games involving this card have the Aegis player stalling until they can summon it, and the opponent desperately trying to win the game before it comes out, and considering that Havencraft is already the textbook Control deck of the game, it makes playing against the Aegis player very frustrating. It gets doubly frustrating when the Haven player telegraphs it with Test of Strength on turn 8, making it harder to kill them before Aegis drops and impossible to do so once Aegis appears. Even better, Heavenly Aegis itself is also unaffected by Test of Strength, allowing it to attack you directly regardless. While an Aegis-focused deck currently isn't exceptionally strong, the inability to interact with it makes it almost as hated as Dimension Shift, and its presence in the game invalidates nearly any deck, until the advent of Mr. Full Moon who is almost specifically designed to counter it.
  • Aegis's strength reaches a whole new level in Take Two, where the usual aggressive tactics to counter it are less consistent and the main means to maintain board dominance is through follower combat. Whoever lands Aegis typically has won the game in Take Two.
  • While Aegis is not as strong in high-level play, the overall slower pace of low-level games makes it much easier to set up the Aegis-Test combo without being killed prematurely or the combo being answered. As a result, on 29 June 2017, Test of Strength was changed such that it now gives followers Ward, something that Aegis cannot benefit from. ^note The original version of Test of Strength applies a debuff to all followers that force them to attack enemy followers that they can hit, before being able to hit the enemy leader. Aegis is immune to this debuff, and so can hit the enemy leader with impunity while the enemy is forced to attack it instead.
• Grimnir, War Tempest may not be as impactful or game-winning as any of the above cards, but is acknowledged to be very strong for his cost. 3pp for a 2/3 is considered an excellent statline, but when he also receives Ward he makes for a great 3-drop that can hold off and take down two low-cost followers. Late in the game, he gains access to his Enhance ability that deals 1 damage to all enemies 4 times - effectively a one-sided Conflagration that can easily wipe out attempts to rebuild the board late in the game and sometimes provides the burn damage to end games. On top of all that, he's a Neutral follower, meaning he can be run by nearly any deck except the most aggressive ones.
  
  In Dragoncraft decks, Grimnir can become even more dangerous, due to Dragoncraft being able to speed up their Play Orb gain, as well as Dragonclaw Pendant. Dragonclaw Pendant increases the damage all your cards deal by 1. On paper, that's not so bad. However, Grimnir doesn't just deal 4 damage, it deals 1 damage four times, meaning its damage jumps from 4 to 8 with just one Pendant, making him an almost guaranteed field-wipe^note as there are very few cards with more than 8 health. As of the July 30th update, Grimnir's enhance effect was changed so that it no longer deals damage to the enemy leader, making Grimnir a purely defensive option as opposed to a Neutral game ender, on top of destroying his lethal interaction with Pendant.
• Dragoncraft went from the bottom end of this trope straight to the other end with the Tempest of the Gods expansion. Before the expansion, Dragoncraft was too slow, as its ramping tools sacrificed the ability to contest the board and it lacked good midgame options. After the expansion, Dragoncraft received a ton of good faction-specific cards and strong midgame options and healing for survival, along with the ability to squeeze out game-ending burst damage. Your best bet against a Dragon player is to typically play aggressively and pray they draw poorly. Two weeks after the release of Tempest and Dragon shot up to one of the most popular crafts to play.
  • Wind Reader Zell was initially panned for the conditions behind his effect: Use an evolve while Overflow is active to bestow Storm to any follower. What players didn't expect is for Dragon to have good board contesting options and healing to survive to the late game without burning evolves, where Zell can then be used in combination with Ouroboros for a total of 11 burst damage, or Sahaquiel and Bahamut for a total of 13 damage. This sudden game-ending ability gave Dragon the leg-up on Haven matchups. On May 23 2017, Zell got altered — while his evolve ability remains unchanged, he is now a 4pp 3/4. This prevents Dragon from being able to easily execute the above burst damage combos as they will now require the assistance of cost-reducing cards.
  • Ouroboros can easily be described as Ultimate Carrot on steroids. 8/4 is nothing to sneeze at, as it has enough attack to defeat most things in battle and threaten lethal if not dealt with, and if paired with an evolve and its 3-damage fanfare it can take on Bahamut on its own. 4 defense also barely dodges a lot of Haven's banish effects, making it very hard to deal with, especially in light of its Last Words effect. When it dies (and that's a when, since your opponent has to answer it one way or another) it simply returns to its owner's hand on top of healing the leader for 3, giving the player extended stamina to be able to afford to play Ouroboros again. Its endless recursion ability and leader healing made it a very powerful card for Dragoncraft, both in constructed and Take Two. As of the update in July 2017, Ouroboros's Last Words effect has its healing effect removed, making Ouroboros much less frustrating to deal with for classes that lack banish or transform.
    
    Quite bizarrely, Ouroboros was dissed for being too weak during preview season due to a mistranslation in the first site that showcased it. The mistranslation had attributed its Last Words ability only to Ouroboros's evolved form, making it look laughably bad. Until the mistake was cleared up, players mocked Ouroboros as "so weak an evolved Carrot can defeat it and come back to tell the tale", and even after that it just couldn't shake off the bad reputation until it proved its worth in practice. Nobody's laughing now.
  • Sibyl of the Waterwyrm is an interesting case where she fell on both sides of the spectrum at two different times. When she was first spoiled, players were not impressed with the conditions behind her effects — they wanted her to ramp at any time when played as opposed to strictly turn 5 or later (which would make her an insanely powerful asset to the ramp strategy), and the healing was not active when played on curve either. Then the expansion launched and not long after players began complaining of how strong her heal provides, falling just behind Lucifer's but becoming available earlier, while also being a sizeable body to help contest the board during the turns when evolutions become available. The November 2017 balance change finally nudged her stats down to 3/4, making her understatted in exchange for the utility she provides and easier to kill in retaliation, on top of keeping her in line with the expected power levels in the coming Rotation format.
    
    After Sibyl left Rotation in July 2018, her statline would return to 4/5 to keep her in line with Unlimited's raised power level, and to increase the play rate of the then-overshadowed Ramp Dragon in that format.
  • Lightning Blast is a 6pp spell that banishes 1 follower or amulet, effectively being an Odin without the 4/3 body. While this initially looks inefficient, it truly shines when played at 10pp, where it banishes everything the opponent controls. It does not create board presence and forces the Dragon player to use up their entire turn, but when the mere possibility of its existence chases off two decks — Nephthys Shadow and Seraph Haven — from the ladder, something is terribly wrong. If the Dragon player does have board presence, though, it is not uncommon to see this card clear the path for their followers to strike — like, say, giving Bahamut a clear shot at the opponent. In Take Two, this card also offers ridiculous value, letting the Dragon player get back from any bad position, and its status as a silver card make it far easier to encounter than other boardwipes. On May 23 2017, Lightning Blast's Enhance effect was removed, turning it into only a mediocre removal spell. Design notes that its Enhance effect was supposed to improve Dragon's play rates and this decision had Gone Horribly Right.
• Shadowcraft also broke out of its Overshadowed by Awesome status with Tempest giving it tools to maintain a very stubborn board that rewards them with a giant boon of shadows should the opponent move to take it out. A fortnight after the release of Tempest and the ladder was practically dominated with Dragon and Shadow — Shadow had very strong early and midgames to crush slower decks, while Dragon had midgame defenses and healing to outlast all but the fastest decks.
  • Shadow Reaper started off as a humble-looking 2pp 1/1 that gets +1/+1 for each allied follower death and temporary Ambush to ensure that it's difficult to answer before it gets enough buffs to strike. In its debut format, it was a good card to prop up the aggro Shadow strategy, pushing aggro Shadow towards mid to high tiers. By Tempest, though, Shadow received enough tools to set up an annoying board state that forces the opponent to answer through combat, making Shadow Reaper a Demonic Spider that grows to lethal sizes during its turn of safety before striking. Given its penchant for summoning Skeletons, Shadow Reaper enforces a Morton's Fork on the opponent: Clear the board and risk dealing with a large Reaper, or ignore the board and get pummeled by what is there. Sometimes the latter isn't even an option, as the opponent will trade in their own board themselves before hitting with a giant Reaper. The worse part about Reaper is when the opponent plays two of them at the same time while backed up with a sizeable board from before — there are very few things that can handily dispatch two Reapers at once. Such was its power that Reaper got nerfed to 3pp on 29 June, making the double Reaper combo appear much later and increasing the difficulty in setting up a board and Reaper at the same time. Its nerf would then be reverted long after it rotated into Unlimited.
  • Prince Catacomb is a 3pp 1/1 who turns every follower the player has on board into Goddamned Bats as they will leave behind 1/1 Skeletons when killed. This does not seem like much, but the Skeletons can either provide a lot of shadow fuel for later plays, provide death triggers to rapidly boost Shadow Reaper, or even ensure there is a body left on the board to be buffed with cards like Orthrus. Shadow mirrors are often decided by who lands Catacomb earlier and on a wider board. And this is before considering back-to-back Catacombs which create incredibly stubborn boards. On May 23 2017, Prince's cost was increased to 4pp, delaying his combos and the speed at which his synergies can be played, in addition to competing with other 4-drops and hindering midrange Shadow's "perfect curve" plays. This would also close the win rate difference between Shadow going first or second.
  • Demonlord Eachtar is a 7pp 5/6 who has the potential to summon a flood of Zombies with Rush while buffing the rest of the board to boot, using 3 shadows to summon a Zombie and repeating until the player has run out of space or shadows. At turn 7, it is typically expected for both players to have expended their evolves contesting the board, and then Eachtar arrives, using the mass of shadows generated from the clashing of followers to suddenly turn the tides with his zombie horde. Perhaps the worst part of his effect is the fact that he buffs everything else with a temporary 2 additional attack, even other followers that are still around from the previous turn. Common practice is to play Death's Breath first to put a decent amount of stats on the board that's also difficult to eliminate before following up with Eachtar next turn which provides game-ending burst damage. Not helping matters is that Prince Catacomb, described above, already creates very stubborn boards, nearly guaranteeing that Eachtar has several things to buff for massive damage to the enemy leader. After the nerf to Prince Catacomb, Shadow still remained one of the reigning crafts of the Tempest format — albeit not as indomitable as it once was — and players are quick to point to Eachtar as the source of the craft's strength.
    
    The August 2017 patch saw to it that Eacthar's head would finally be taken — while he still gives the board a buff and Rush, he only summons a static 2 Zombies for a flat 8 shadows. This has reduced the shadow efficiency of his Necromancy effect, and ensures that he can't always clear out a full board or completely fill up a board from nowhere. This nerf would then be reverted in June 2018 as Eachtar would rotate out.
  • Immortal Thane is pretty much a mountain of value. When played, he calls along up two Wights, forcing the opponent to kill the Wights first or risk taking 2 damage each time they kill something else, resulting in suboptimal attack decisions as one tries to defuse the whole situation while minimizing damage. When Thane finally goes down, he bestows his player with a free Wight King, whose Necromancy cost is almost paid for by killing Thane and his crew, providing a good Bane Ward to protect the rest of the board. Even though he had been overshadowed in his debut format due to sharing the same slot as the aforementioned Eachtar, after midrange Shadow's stronger cards got weakened, players started identifying Thane as a problematic card, especially if they can't effectively clear him in time before he and his Wights get buffed for game-ending damage with Eachtar. Eventually, in January 2018, Thane would be nerfed to 8pp, such that he and his crew cannot show up shortly after the opponent exhausts their final evolve, and also make it a little more difficult to follow up with Eachtar for an early win.
  • Little Soulsquasher had a fair 2pp 2/2 statline and can be used early in the game to contest the board like others of her caliber. However, her deadliness comes in the form of her Necromancy effect - for 4 shadows she instantly kills any evolved follower, turning her into a tempo swing during evolve turns without using an evolve yourself while still leaving room to make another play. She has proven to be an annoyance but didn't draw as much ire as the rest of the deck's threats. However, she was still a potential candidate for future nerfs, as Cygames had created her under their previous design philosophy of overtuned cards to push underused decks. With Midrange Shadow getting a resurgence during November 2017, Cygames saw it fit to give Soulsquasher a nerf, putting her stats to 2/1 and impairing her value as an on-curve 2-drop. She would eventually return to form as a 2/2 in mid-2019.

Wonderland Dreams

• Only a few days after the expansion's launch were people already beginning to hate its central theme of Neutral synergy. This is largely due to a very effective early game core involving Alice, Wonderland Explorer, Goblin Leader, Actress Feria and other existing Neutral cards making up the backbone of the deck, flooding the board with cheap Neutral cards that get buffed by Alice and Feria. What's worse is experiencing back-to-back Alices, since Alice also buffs other Neutral cards in hand like the the other Alice waiting to drop the next turn, creating a board state difficult to contest unless you have strong boardwipes yourself. Before Wonderland Dreams, any deck would consist mostly of class cards with Neutral ones being space-fillers; this time round, a lot of popular decks are Neutral cards with class synergy cards filling in the gaps. This has led to a lot of decks having almost the exact same early game plays regardless of which class you were facing, and many got sick of it quickly.
  • The most frustrating part of Neutral synergies was Goblin Leader always leaving behind an extra body to be buffed with Alice who shows up on the next turn. If Goblin Leader wasn't answered as soon as possible, this resulted in a 3/4 and two 2/3 followers on turn 4, with the 2/3s ready to attack. This sort of board state was very difficult to contest, especially if one was going second. As a result, Goblin Leader was changed to a 4pp 2/3 at the end of July 2017, ensuring that he cannot combo as effectively with Alice as before, and allowing the player going second to be able to answer him better since evolves become available.
  • Of all the Neutral synergy decks in this expansion, Swordcraft (a class known for its aggressive decks) was one of the biggest offenders at the time of the expansion's release. This is because of all the new cards introduced in this expansion, Swordcraft has the best synergy for an aggro Neutral deck. Swordcraft has Council of the Card Knights, which summons 3 1/3 Neutral followers (one with Storm, one with a Ward, and one with Bane). Since many of these followers are most likely going to stick due to their stat line, this can almost guarantee Alice being dropped in the following turn to give them buffed stats unless if your opponent has powerful board clears. Many aggro Swordcraft have switched from Commander/Officer interactions towards neutral-oriented aggro or midrange decks, using Rabbit Ear Attendant for card draw, Maisy, Red Riding Hood for effective removal, and Cinderella for early-mid game power. And as with many Swordcraft decks, neutral Sword decks are not only easy to play, but competitively viable in ranked ladder.
  • More specifics on Council of Card Knights: it was a 5pp spell that summoned three 1/3 followers — one with Storm, another with Ward, and a third with Bane. It offered plenty of utility to flood Sword's board, push damage, deflect attacks, and threaten to kill a big follower. Since the followers were Neutral, they also could trigger Maisy's effect and synergized with Rabbit Attendant for a good hand refill. Them all being 3-defense followers makes it very difficult for the opponent eliminate all three. Neutral synergies aside, Council of Card Knights offered so much advantage for 5pp that it continued to be used to great effect in aggro Sword even after the nerfing of the Neutral package, that it would eventually have its cost increased to 6 in late October 2017. This nerf would only be reverted much later, in mid-2019.
  • When Neutral Bloodcraft (see below) was nerfed off the ladder at the end of July 2017, Neutral Rune quickly took its place. In addition to the standard Neutral package, it also used Witch of Sweets and Wizardess of Oz to maintain hand advantage and synergize with cards that required Neutral cards in hand. But their one trump card was Falise, Leonardian Mage, who could use Neutral Rune's large hand to extinguish followers. When played at her Enhance cost of 7, she could even evolve herself without consuming an evolution point and either hit the enemy leader to close the game or clear out whatever follower she couldn't defeat with her Fanfare alone. This ability is what allows an aggressive Neutral Rune build to win games after the evolve points have been exhausted. As of the end August 2017, to check the popularity of Neutral Rune, Falise had her Enhance effect removed, forcing Neutral Rune to find other finishers.
  • Haven, too, joined in on the Neutral package shenanigans with Lion of the Golden City. What this card did was best described as "Daria's second coming." A Neutral Haven player playing Neutral followers in quick succession can get to play this 5/5 as early as turn 4. What the Lion does also helps flood the board, typically with a 4/4 and 2/1 with Beastcall Aria, two 4/4 with Dual Flames, or a 4/5 with March Hare's Teatime. If the opponent was struggling trying to handle the early Neutral aggression, they're definitely not going to be able to answer Lion and its cohort in a timely manner. Like Daria, the perfect Lion sequence was highly dependent on the initial draw, but what sets this aside from other combo decks' inconsistency is that the player could still fall back on aggressive Neutral synergies to pressure the opponent even in the absence of Lion. This also meant that matches against Neutral Haven typically boiled down to praying that the opponent didn't have Lion and an amulet in hand. Not helping matters was the fact that shortly after the Lion lands, Eagle Man would also follow, making it even harder to contest the board flood. Lion would eventually get nerfed to 9pp from its original cost of 7, delaying its earliest playable point to when the opponent has more tools to effectively check its board flood.
  • Neutral Forest has gained traction after the August 2017 nerfs, but not because of its use of the 1-2-3-Alice package like the other cards. Due to Forest's Neutral synergy cards rewarding keeping Neutral cards in hand, it played significantly differently from the other Neutral decks and didn't garner as much hatred as the rest of the Neutral archetypes. Its key card is Beauty and the Beast, which rewards large hand preservation by becoming a 6pp 7/8 follower that also was immune to non-combat damage and destruction effects (like Bane, for instance) if both its conditions were fulfilled, making it a very powerful midgame threat that forces the opponent to expend a lot of resources to defeat, and may even force the wastage of an evolve point to bring them down. Beauty and the Beast was also used with a Roach variant, utilizing them as a means to dent the opponent's health or plow through Wards to clear the way for Roach. The drawback to such a deck was its less stellar early game that had difficulty contending with aggressive boards (barring a lucky and powerful Elf Twins' Assault and a Kindly Treat on curve). For slower decks, however, the only efficient way to dispatch the fearsome Battle Couple was through banish or transformation effects, which involved niche cards rarely seen in Haven and Rune. For other classes which didn't have such luxuries, like Dragon, Blood, and Shadow, seeing Beauty and the Beast be played on curve (or even back-to-back) is a nightmare.
  • Alice's strong point was that her +1/+1 buff allowed many smaller followers to trade safely or even evade boardwipes, which only got exacerbated if Actress Feria stacked on yet another +1/+1 buff to turn a horde of 2pp followers to the equivalent of 4pp or 5pp followers. Her buff being a Fanfare didn't help as it heavily rewarded the aggressive Neutral deck going first. After a Neutral deck being one of the top tier decks for all three months of the Wonderland format, Alice finally took a big nerf — her buff would only give +1/+0, ensuring that the neutral follower swarm could still be punished by early board control. As time went on and she got banished to Unlimited, Alice would receive a slight buff but never a true return to form — her bonus defense became a separate buff tied to evolution, keeping her from easily securing a snowballing advantage when going first.
• Neutral Bloodcraft is easily one of the most loathed decks in the early Wonderland format due to the following, on top of the Neutral core described above:
  • Baphomet was a humble 2pp 2/1 who drew Bloodcraft cards with 5 or more attack, and an Enhance 5 effect that also reduced the drawn card's cost by 3. Back when it was introduced in Tempest of the Gods, it was mostly used on combo decks that used Azazel, Laura and Razory Claw on turn 10, or in Maelstrom Serpent decks, which saw limited success back in the day thanks to the former being rather slow and the latter being susceptible to board wipes. However, Wonderland Dreams introduced Spawn of the Abyss, detailed below. Spawn was meant to be a stable turn 8 finisher for Blood without relying on Vengeance or a combo, but Baphomet's Enhance ability reduced its cost to enable its ridiculous burst damage as early as turn 6 or 7, and in a neutral midrange deck to boot, instead of a control deck as initially intended.
    
    The July 30 2017 update hit Baphomet with the biggest nerf among all known nerfs. Not only did its cost-reducing Enhance ability get removed entirely, but it now draws any Bloodcraft follower, not just those with 5 or more attack. This drastically changed Baphomet's role from a win condition tutor to a source of card advantage in aggressive decks. Many combos that were once enabled by Baphomet were disabled in the process.
  • Spawn of the Abyss is an 8pp 6/7 with the nasty effect of dealing 6 damage (worse yet, 8 if evolved) to the opponent when it first attacks or gets destroyed while it still has Ambush active, thus putting the player in a nasty Morton's Fork situation. Given its large body, not only is it guaranteed to get at least 6 damage on you due to safety via Ambush, but it can also decimate your heaviest hitter while doing so. Did you not have access to a Ward follower? Enjoy taking 12 or 16 damage when Spawn starts swinging. Your only hope of safely defusing it is either with a bounce, banish, or transformation effect that doesn't target. Oh and it gets better, Spawn can be pulled by Baphomet (detailed above) which reduces its cost to 5, allowing Spawn to come down on turn 6 and easily threaten 12 or 16 damage. As of July 30th update, Spawn's damage effect when attacking out of Ambush was reduced to 5 damage, which remains the same even when evolving him. Combined with the Baphomet nerf detailed above, it puts Spawn in a reasonable level while not killing off control Bloodcraft's finisher at the same time.
  • Big Knuckle Bodyguard is an excellently-statted 4pp 3/4 that destroys an enemy follower with 3 or less defense on fanfare at the cost of 2 life (none if in Vengeance) which is a very small price to pay for the massive overall advantage that this card provides, and it also potentially saves an evolve point for the Bloodcraft player, even worse if they're going first, which usually means that the opponent now has to deal with potentially 3 followers on play on turn 4, something that not many decks can recover from. Despite Bodyguard dodging the bullet in the July 2017 nerf, he still saw enough play in both aggro and Vengeance Blood due to his great tempo swing or maintenance of board dominance regardless of whether the player was going first or second. At the end of August 2017, Bodyguard was changed to a 5pp follower, making him not only understatted but strictly for assisting midgame board contention.
  • Tove is also a Blood bronze card that drew ire. A 2pp 3/3 is outstandingly strong — enough to safely trade against a 2pp and a 3pp follower — so of course this has to be counterbalanced by a downside. This downside? It can't attack until a Neutral follower enters your area. Given that the typical neutral Blood deck runs a plethora of 2pp or 3pp Neutral followers, this downside might as well be non-existent as the deck can easily lift the restriction when they want to start attacking with Tove. The tempo offered is so strong that nearly every deck trying to ladder amidst the neutral Blood menace needed a way to immediately answer Tove before they get crushed in snowballing advantage, as Tove can easily be followed by the Goblin Leader + Alice combo described above, which either clears enemy boards or provides chip damage so that Baphomet at 5pp followed by Spawn at 6pp nearly guarantees victory. As of July 2017 update, Tove's stats was changed from 3/3 to 2/2 with it's "can't attack" effect removed. This has outright defanged it, putting it on par with several other 2pp 2/2 followers.
  • Phantom Cat is a gold follower, who for 6pp, can draw you two cards while putting a substantial 5/5 body on the board, allowing more aggressive neutral decks to refill their hand while still threatening the opponent at the same time. If this doesn't sound powerful enough already, Phantom Cat also has the additional effect of dealing 2 damage to your opponent's face for every neutral card you draw from his effect, meaning that he can deal up to 4 face damage by himself, all while drawing you cards and putting a threatening body on board with zero drawbacks. When he does less than 4 face damage, it's also a cause for worry, as one of the cards his player just drew is one of the deck's few Bloodcraft cards — either another Phantom Cat for even more face damage, or Razory Claw which can outright end you. Phantom Cat's effect is so strong that some Neutral Blood lists have cut Spawn entirely and gone for a more aggressive curve with Phantom Cat as the finisher, while others play both Cat and Spawn in the same deck, despite Phantom Cat's 5 attack diluting the ability of the above-mentioned Baphomet to pull Spawn consistently.
• Princess Snow White may look like an unassuming 2pp 1/2 with a mediocre evolve stat boost, but her strength is not to be underestimated. The ability to come back as an evolved 2/3 with the associated Rush allows her to beat many 2-drops and 3-drops — making her an effective 2pp 3/3 most of the time, and creating a strong tempo advantage which the likes of pre-nerf Tove could create. Pair her with Heavenly Hound and not only did Snow White manage to successfully beat the opponent's 2/2 or 2/3 and survive, but it'd be difficult to surmount the 2/4 Ward which Hound has become, thereby fixing Haven's weak early game and making it a very good well-rounded class. There's a reason why she was given Legendary rarity. While the prevalence of Neutral Blood overshadowed her strength, it did not go unnoticed by the design team. As of July 2017, Snow White's evolved stats are now 2/2 instead of 2/3, greatly reducing her early game survivability and instead turning her into merely a sticky, fair follower.
• With Neutral Blood out of the way after the July 2017 nerfs, another Blood deck went to take its place as most hated — Aggro Blood. While the deck's backbone hasn't changed much, it did receive great midgame options like Big Knuckle Bodyguard and Scarlet Sabreur to help it dominate the board even more. One of its strongest additions is Carabosse, Wicked Fairy. While her Fanfare prevents further play point orb gain, a typical aggro deck doesn't run any cards more expensive than 6pp, allowing them to play her as early as possible with no big repercussion. Her effects practically ensure consistency in the aggro deck's late game, providing an unstoppable source of chip damage and card draw which remedy's the aggro deck's biggest weakness and giving it extra reach to finish off weakened opponents. Unless you have enough healing to stay reasonably healthy throughout the game and/or enough removal to constantly clear away the enemy followers, it's usually game, set, and match the moment you notice an aggro Blood opponent going first.
  • Players noticed that aggro Blood sometimes didn't even need Carabosse to win. Scarlet Sabreur was one of the tools that aggro Blood used to help close the game. Her Fanfare would typically hit the enemy leader to put them closer to death while she could take out two followers due to her reasonable defense and Bane ability. As of the end of August 2017, Sabreur's Fanfare would lose its ability to target the enemy leader, encouraging the player to use her to contest the board and fit her into more control-oriented decks.
  • The designers had noted that Carabosse, like other legendaries released in Tempest of the Gods and Wonderland Dreams, was deliberately overtuned to promote the use of an underused deck. With an aggressive Blood deck featuring Carabosse having one of the highest winrates in November 2017, the balance change at the end of that month reduced Carabosse's stats from 6/6 to 5/5, putting her more in line with future legendaries to come and keeping her from being too potent the future Rotation format. Many players are rather indifferent to this change, though, as they value Carabosse's effect more than her statline.
• Ambush Sword actually broke out of its rut in late August and early September. Rather than do things like rely on snowballing buffs with Rogue's Creed, it instead uses several cheap Ambush followers to essentially guarantee that there will be something around to buff and do damage with. The deck had all the pieces, with early game followers like Ninja Trainee and Kunoichi Trainee, easy buffs like White General, Ephemera, and Angelic Knight, the ever-loathed Vagabond Frog (see above), Kunoichi Master that spawns the said Kunoichi Trainee, and a new powerful removal spell in the form of Shield of Flame, which can easily destroy any ward hoping to halt its progress. While it was overshadowed by the faster Aggro Blood and the wide buffs in the Neutral package, the nerfs that reduced their play rate (on top of an Ambush Aggro deck winning a tournament) resulted in Ambush Aggro gaining rapid popularity. Being on the receiving end of Ambush Sword, on the other hand, was not as great an experience, as the Ambush mechanic practically guaranteed damage on the following turn, and required really sturdy Wards, boardwipes, or randomly-targeting removal to deal with the threats, assets not readily available to a few classes. The Ambush mirror also effectively boiled down to a matter of who could start pressuring first.
  • Vagabond Frog is a humble-looking 3pp 1/2 who replenishes Ambush at the end of the turn, but this constant form of protection from attacks and targeted effects made it completely safe to stack buffs on him. This has resulted in a silly deck designed around drawing and playing him as soon as possible, and snowballing the opponent to victory. It had a few glaring counters (Wards, boardwipes, aggressive pressure), but like Dimension Shift, it was very unsatisfying to lose to. That being said, he is considered to be a highly valuable follower for many aggro Sword decks due to his ability to constantly replenish Ambush and Wonderland Dreams expansion introduced new tools that give the ambush Aggro Sword some support. Vagabond Frog would eventually have his cost increased to 4pp to curb the power of Ambush Aggro.
  • Shield of Flame would be edited too. Its 6 damage condition turned into an Enhance 6 cost as opposed to merely needing to control an Ambush follower to enable, reducing Ambush's ability to eliminate Wards efficiently, without hurting Shield's strength in Take Two. This nerf would be reverted long after Ambush Sword lost prominence.
• Among players who face aggro decks, many will be very annoyed with the presence of Ephemera, Angelic Slacker. While she stays on the field, she grants a temporary +1 attack boost to attacking followers, giving them enough power to either trade better or pressure the opponent's health even more. On top of that, despite her weak 1/3 stats for 4pp, she has Ambush and under most circumstances never needs to attack, meaning she acts more like a sticky Royal Banner for any aggro deck unless she is removed with non-targeting spells or effects. Her presence is what gives a Zerg Rush enough power to deal lethal damage before it starts to lose momentum, and aggro Sword can use her to to secure lethal as early as turn 5. She would eventually be nerfed to 5pp in late October 2017, which puts her at odds with a plethora of other 5-cost cards that Sword has.

Starforged Legends

• Dimension Shift was an 18-cost spell^note Your Play Points cap out at 10, so it is unplayable without Spellboosting it which reduces its cost by 1 each time you play a spell, and has the ever-loathed effect of granting an Extra Turn. While it sounds reasonably balanced on paper, there are combo decks built around reducing this card's cost as fast as possible, allowing them to cast the card as early as turn 7, while dropping several Flame Destroyers (which can also be boosted to become free) to kill the opponent right away. The main issue players have with this card is being on the receiving end of it — The moment the Dimension Shift deck started taking extra turns, you are reduced to a sitting duck while they could take all the time they want in killing you. Particularly unsportsmanlike Dimension Shift players would also gloat by playing as many cards as they could during those extra turns even if doing so was unnecessary to achieving victory. Despite Dimension Shift decks not displaying a stellar winrate overall which would warrant attention from the devs (particularly due to their glaring weakness to aggressive decks that could outpressure their removal suite), it was perpetually a looming threat to watch for, especially if any slower control deck would gain popularity.
  
  After going untouched for almost a year and a half, Dimension Shift's popularity reached an all-time high with Starforged Legends, as it had gained enough tools to have an advantage against even midrange decks, forcing players of that archetype to include odd selections specifically to get an edge against the off chance they run into a Shift deck. The November 2017 balance change finally increased Dimension Shift's base cost from 18 to 20, which may not allow grindy control decks to beat it, but give midrange decks an additional few turns that can spell all the difference between victory or defeat.
  
  That said, while the nerf did push Shift out of favor for a while, especially after the establishment of the Unlimited format, Dimension Shift would endure the test of time, slowly gathering Spellboost elements from many different sets until it could even contend in a faster Unlimited format, years later. It speaks volumes that Shift kept its increased cost even after numerous other cards in Unlimited got reverted in March 2023.
  • Complementing Shift as a secondary win condition is Giant Chimera. How it works is that it builds up a pool of damage every time it's spellboosted. When it's played, it deals damage to every follower the opponent has from this pool and then deals the rest to the leader. A Giant Chimera boosted from the beginning of the game can potentially win the game if the player reaches 9 play points, and usually a Shift or two on turn 7 or 8 allows the player the opening to drop a Chimera right after a Shift combo to push for lethal.
  • But perhaps the most potent addition to the Dimension Shift deck is Magic Owl. It is for all intents and purposes a superior Spectral Wizard, costing 1 play point less, a better evolution bonus, and still retaining the same evolve effect of spellboosting two times. The cheaper cost is what makes Owl a stronger card, as the extra available play point allows the player to easily utilize other combo pieces in the Dimension Shift deck. A turn 7 Shift combo has become the norm rather than the best case scenario, and if a player evolves multiple Owls back-to-back they can launch the combo as early as turn 6. The Owl's powerful spellboosting ability made it a staple in any Spellboost-focused deck where it was legal, and it continued to be a significant follower before and after it rotated out.
• Dragoncraft got another powerful new toy with Prime Dragon Keeper. Its effect is that if you have Overflow, then whenever you play a Dragoncraft follower that costs 3 play points or less, then it deals two damage to a random enemy on the field and one damage to the enemy leader and it also becomes unable to be attacked, and with a base of 5 defense, it easily dodges tons of common removal effects. While this effect doesn't seem like much, remember that most Dragon players only play her when they have established Overflow, and the chip damage adds up really quickly to grind most wide boards to dust. To facilitate this, the deck also runs loads of cheap followers like Ivory Dragon, Dragon Summoner, Dragonrearer Matilda, and Star Phoenix who can replenish the hand to keep up the board spam, and Fire Lizard and Dragoon Scyther, who can help control the enemy board if Prime Dragon Keeper alone proves to not be enough. This, on top of Prime Dragon Keeper's agonizingly slow animations for her effect, which is even more jarring when compared to the fact that several older animations have been sped up in the same update. Combined with powerful Storm finishers like Dark Dragoon Forte and Genesis Dragon, and you have a powerful deck. Most amusingly, much like Sibyl, Prime Dragon Keeper fell on the other side of this trope during previews, deemed by many to be too situational and too weak outside Overflow, before decks built around her (as opposed to trying to fit her in the usual Ramp Dragon deck) became popular and feared. Decks that run Prime Dragon Keeper have shown strong wins in tournaments due to the mixture of having a strong early game akin to an aggro deck while mixing with the ramp Mechanic of Dragon, which allows Dragoncraft to contest the board both early game and late game at the same time. She was so dominant on the ladder that she would eventually be nerfed to a 4pp 1/3; first to prevent multiple copies of Keeper triggering each others' effects, and also to make her much more susceptible to cheap removal. Oh, and her animation has been significantly sped up.
• Aggro Swordcraft claws its way out of its previous rut not with a single new card, but new interactions that practically enable it to play Storm followers on nearly every single turn, racing the opponent to single digits as early as turn 5 while filling the board with a plethora of followers. New additions include Perseus as a 1-drop follower who enables Centaur Vanguard on the following turn, and Round Table Assembly summoning 2 copies of Princess Juliet for 4 to 6 burst damage. Aggro Sword going first and landing the perfect curve absolutely destroys any deck that is missing early removal, Wards, and/or healing. Such was its speed that it was eventually clipped with the nerfs to Ephemera and Council of Card Knights, detailed above.
• While aggro Swordcraft has shown a lot of dominance in both ladder and tournament settings, midrange and control Swordcraft decks have a powerful new Commander called Mars, Silent Flame General, a 2/3 3pp Legendary Commander. While she is in play, she grants every Swordcraft follower +1 defense and a Clash ability that gains +1 attack. While it doesn't seem much since she is most likely going to be focused, she is known to have great synergy with White Paladin, who summons a Shield Guardian for every enemy follower in play on evolution. This amounts to Mars being protected by a 4/4 Ward and many 1/2 Wards — a defensive wall that requires a strong boardwipe to erase. Combined with the Round Table Assembly card mentioned above, it is possible to get a lucky pull of getting a Mars and a White Paladin in the field and punish any aggro deck that utilize a Zerg Rush strategy. The Mars + White Paladin combination in midrange Swordcraft decks has shown to be incredibly powerful in the North American NGE tournaments and is one of the few decks that can consistently counter aggro Sword and is one of the few Swordcraft decks that can easily contest with midrange Shadowcraft decks during the midgame, only losing to Dragoncraft decks that run Prime Dragon Keeper.
• Forestcraft, another class that has been long forgotten since Rise of Bahamut expansion, began clawing its way out from its grave while maintaining its identity as a Combo class. OTK Roach has some new tools in their arsenal such as Wood of Brambles from the previous expansion to help contest the early game, Airbound Barrage to help remove certain followers in the early game and comboing with the Roach combo lategame, and Spring-Green Protection to help draw cards and distribute power boosts among stray followers. In addition to the above, Aggro Forest was also given life as a sister deck that runs the typical tools for OTK Roach, but has ways to contest the early game by utilizing a Zerg Rush strategy, spamming a lot of cheap followers for chip damage and to enable other combo-reliant cards, only resorting to Roach to finish the game. Aggro Forest has a lot of nasty tools to use such Elf Song that buff all the Fairies and 1pp followers on board and putting two Fairies into hand, which then perfectly leads up to triggering Beetle Warrior for a powerful Storm follower, Fairy Driver that grants Fairies Storm and push for more damage, and Ipiria as a way to help connect damage for the Roach combo if necessary ^note It is not as strong Beauty and the Beast, but the Ambush property until the end of your opponent's turn makes Ipiria a powerful follower. Unlike most aggro decks, Aggro Forest does not lose a much steam lategame due to their ability to pull off their OTK Roach combo and their ability to generate Fairies, meaning the only way to counter Aggro Forest is either a control deck utilizing a strong combination of board wipes, sturdy Wards with high defense, and healing, or the means to apply enough offensive pressure to force them on the defensive.
• While Shadowcraft has many of its midrange tools nerfed in the previous expansion, Shadowcraft is given Ceres of the Night for slower midrange and Nephthys decks. She's a bulky 1/4 4 pp follower with a Clash ability that deals 2 damage to an enemy follower. Since Clash effects activate before the damage is dealt, she can effectively remove a lot of followers with less than 2 defense without taking a scratch (especially damaged evolved followers), while still functioning like an effective 5/6 to anything trying to trade into an evolved Ceres. In addition, she also heals 2 defense at the end of the player's turn, meaning she needs to be dealt with as soon as possible, but her bulky stats makes her incredibly difficult to remove without the aggro player sacrificing the good part of a turn to use hard removal. Due to her high defense stats, her Clash ability, and potent healing, she is highly popular among many Shadow players and a nightmare for the aggro player.
• Staircase to Paradise is an oddity, in that it didn't greatly support any one deck so much as become an early utility for a whole lot of decks. While it wasn't hated as much as the likes of Prime Dragon Keeper, many players noted its strength — most decks which could afford land Staircase on turn 1 would then proceed to contest the board until they trigger it on as early as turn 5 or 6 and have a resource advantage over the opponent. Most notably, Atomy-based Shadow decks would simply use it as a cheap card to fill the board so they can play Lord Atomy as early as possible, with the draw from Staircase refilling their hand after investing so much into their combo. The November 2017 balance change led to Staircase's cost going from 1pp to 2pp, and the countdown adjusted from 7 to 6. Moving its cost up forces players to deliberate between playing Staircase over a vital 2-drop and look into other sources of card advantage. This change also interfered with its ability to set up and support an early Atomy, nudging the Atomy deck out of popularity.
• The Dread Queen combo Dragon focuses on a Storm combo: Use Queen of the Dread Sea to reduce the costs of Genesis Dragon and Arriet to 0, play Genesis Dragon, attack, follow up with Arriet, and attack again. This delivers 14 damage to an unguarded player or even 18 when the Dragon player has an evolve saved thus far, and if the Dragon player had been getting all their ramp cards early enough they can execute this 10pp combo as early as turn 7. While all the combo pieces were around since Wonderland Dreams, it wasn't consistent enough until Starforged Legends introduced a little more draw power to let the Dragon player assemble the combo quickly, pushing the deck from a joke deck to something fearsome.
  
  Due to the one-turn-kill combos enabled by Queen of the Dread Sea, both before and after Chronogenesis, Cygames realized how her effect warps design space for high-cost cards both in and outside Dragoncraft. With the Dawnbreak Nightedge patch she was changed from a 7/7 to a 5/5, and her abilities altered to reducing costs of cards by 5 as opposed to making them completely free, reducing the raw strength of any combo she enables and basically destroying the deck's whole concept.

Chronogenesis

Rotation

• Rotation was dominated by three decks in its first few weeks — Midrange Shadow, Ramp Dragon, and Earth Rite Rune. The three decks have their heaviest hitters introduced in later sets, including a few untouched remnants from the Power Creep-infested Tempest and Wonderland sets, and thus were least affected by the loss of the Classic and Darkness Evolved sets. Not helping matters was that Chronogenesis did not introduce enough suitable replacements to whatever was rotating out, so the decks that would keep these three in check would vanish.
  • Midrange Shadow stands out above the other two, due to gaining incredible assets in the form of Skull Ring that develops a particularly stubborn board (ripe for curving into Prince Catacomb for even more stickiness), another notoriously sticky follower known as Skeleton Prince, on top of a finisher in the form of Underworld Ruler Aisha. It only started petering out in usage in mid-January after people started teching in mid-strength boardwipes against it (for example, Dirt Rune and several midrange Sword decks that run Lancer of the Tempest) and after Haven's lists got fully optimized and started showing up to counter it (see below).
  • Burn Earth Rite had been a contender due to having solid followers with an amazing amount of reach, but perhaps among their strongest cards is Magic Illusionist, a supreme example of Goddamned Bats. While he can be extinguished with an early banish, for other decks that can't answer him, he is a ridiculously sticky 2/2, making amazing value trades or staying around to pressure the opponent as long as the Earth Rite player has the Sigils to back him up. In January 2018, Magic Illusionist got nerfed to a 2/1, making it such that even a 1/1 trades evenly with him, and any deck with a plethora of 1-damage pings can quickly turn him into a liability by burning up his player's Sigil reserve. The introduction of Paradise Vanguard as a replacement for Lyrial in Rotation also eventually offered many decks an easy out against Illusionist, and after he rotated out, the devs saw it fit to revert him to a 2/2.
• Since Classic and Darkness Evolved were the first sets to go from Rotation, many aggro decks that were dependent on cards from those sets either vanished completely or were left greatly weakened. Aggro Forest, however, completely avoids this fate here, because many of its core cards come from Wonderland Dreams and Starforged Legends, and it has gained more options from Chronogenesis. For instance, Firesprite Grove replaces both Fairy Circle and Elf Child May, as it is a Fairy generator and an eventual ping; Furious Elder Weedman and Weald Philosopher serves as Forestcraft's version of Palace Fencer and White General respectively; Leaf Man serves as a (albeit expensive) replacement to Elf Girl Liza who also buffs your followers in play; and Aria, Guiding Fairy serves a superior replacement to Elven Princess Mage where it grants the player 0 cost Fairy Wisps that help supplement Forestcraft's aggressive combos with Beetle Warrior and Elf Song ^note The Wisps also banish themselves if 2 or more other cards have been played that turn, letting them add to the play count without clogging up your board. In fact, aggro Forest is one of the few decks that can easily contest midrange Shadow's board or out-pressure Ramp Dragon. Aggro Forest continued to do very well in the subsequent Rotation formats, and to keep its strength in check, its bulkiest follower, Ipiria, would have its cost raised from 5pp to 6.
• In the Unlimited format, the presence of combo decks like OTK Roach or Dimension Shift kept control decks like Seraph or Aegis Haven from getting an edge. In Rotation, because combo decks are nearly non-existent ^note The closest combo that can be achieved in Rotation is the Dread Sea combo that uses Azi Dahaka and Arriet, and Forestcraft decks that uses White Wolf with King Elephant, and even so, the said combo decks are slower than their respective Unlimited counterparts and many aggro cards were rotated out, this leaves Haven as one of the strongest classes in Rotation since Haven decks thrive in slower metas. In particular, control decks that run Heavenly Aegis as their lategame finisher are one of the most dominant control decks in Rotation. Combined with Haven's various banishes and board wipes, this makes Haven of the few decks that can consistently counter midrange Shadow in tournament and ladder scene alike.
• The titular Bahamut is a fearsome 10pp 13/13 that destroys everything else on the board when it's played — followers and amulets, allied and enemy. It has a drawback of being unable to attack the enemy leader if they have 2 or more followers, and faces the problem of proccing enemy Last Words that could instantly kill Bahamut in exchange. While an acceptable top-ender in constructed play that pushed out the amulet-dependent Purgatory and Elana menaces, Bahamut is a serious problem in Take Two, where hard removal is scarce and its 13/13 body is very difficult to defeat through direct combat; playing Bahamut often ensures the player's victory.
  
  During the debut of Chronogenesis, Rotation players felt the unadulterated strength of Bahamut as popular neutral hard removal spells like Dance of Death or even Execution rotated out, forcing them to find substitutes or hope they have their own class-specific outs to it in time. When they can't answer Bahamut in time, well, that's part of why Dragon was so strong in the early Chronogenesis format. Bahamut being Neutral also means that you're never completely safe from it by turn 10, and it is always ready to tear your board to shreds when you start taking it back. In one of the more controversial nerfs in the game's history, the January 2018 patch saw to it that Bahamut would be changed pretty drastically — first by turning it into a base 9/9, making it a little easier to beat, and by causing it to only destroy followers.
  
  This latter change was cited to encourage more amulet-dependent decks and plays, but players could already see a combo with Tilting at Windmills before the patch even launched. The amulet was already used to help supplement the Dread Sea combo as mentioned above (using Genesis Dragon in Unlimited or Azi Dahaka in Rotation in conjunction with Arriet) since the amulet grants Neutral followers Storm and cause them to destroy themselves at the end of the turn. Because Bahamut now clears only followers, Tilting at Windmills sticks around to give it Storm, so it goes from a Mighty Glacier that can be walled off by 2 Ambush followers to a Lightning Bruiser that gets an easy clear shot on the opponent, doing 9 to 11 face damage. This alteration was seen by many as a buff rather than the intended nerf, especially since Bahamut is no longer at risk of triggering enemy amulets with Last Word (especially Tribunal of Good and Evil, which would take out Bahamut with it).
• In the Unlimited format, Daria is kept in check by early pressure from aggressive decks (i.e. aggro Sword, aggro Blood, and aggro Forest), or strong midgame board wipes that punish its overextension (such as Themis's Decree and Revelation). In Rotation, these cards are almost non-existent, so Daria can boost its hand and field its massive board without worry of being answered easily. Your only hope in the Daria matchup is that the opponent drew very poorly, or that you're playing aggro Forest with a good opening curve.
• One of the most hated Portalcraft cards is Acceleratium, a humble 1pp amulet that bestows Artifacts with Rush and refunds a play point whenever they are played. While this looks innocuous, a vast majority of Artifacts generated are 1pp cards, turning them effectively free. Giving them Rush makes them excellent for chipping down enemy followers, and with Analyzing Artifacts, which let you draw a card on death, you get a near constant source of damage without sacrificing hand advantage while it is active. The biggest draw from Acceleratium is how it synergizes with Deus Ex Machina's effect, as you gain two play points for each Artifact played, effectively gaining additional play points with cheap Artifacts. This combo can lead to rather explosive turns on the Portal player's part, tearing an opponent's board to shreds while building up the Portal player's own.

Unlimited

• Meanwhile, in Unlimited, aggro Blood is most dominant for the purpose of rapidly climbing the ladder through very fast games. Savage Wolf is the only new addition it has received, and frankly, the only new addition it needed, to deliver lethal damage at rates comparable to pre-nerf Starforged aggro Sword.
  • One very vital asset in Blood is Blood Wolf, a humble 2pp 2/1 with Storm that does self-damage on Fanfare. Its versatility lets the Blood player reach Vengeance a little faster, play more aggressively in aggro, and is a great tool in taking the board or bursting down opponents when drawn out with Dark Airjammer. Because it was so ubiquitous in all Blood decks and is fantastic when played going first, Blood Wolf is one of the first cards to be restricted to 1 copy per deck in Unlimited.
  • Even still, aggro Blood proved to be a strong contender due to having a strong 1-drop in the form of Ambling Wraith. It boasted premium 1/2 stats on top of providing an immediate ping to both leaders on Fanfare, making it sufficiently resilient in the early turns while also advancing Blood's game plan. Predicting that aggro Blood would remain a contender even after Dawnbreak Nightedge expansion, Cygames reduced its defense to 1 to make it easier to pick off.
• Also in Unlimited, Roach OTK made a resurgence due to the introduction of Aria, Guiding Fairy who puts 0pp 1/1 Fairy Wisps in hand on Fanfare and Evolve. Not only does this serve as a strictly better version of Elven Princess Mage by setting up a combo without always burning an evolve, but the Wisps also banish themselves if played late enough in a turn, increasing the card play count without consuming vital board space. All this allows for Roach combos to hit even harder, approaching the standards of Miracle Roach back in the Bahamut format. To curb this, Aria would be restricted to 1 copy per deck in this format.
  
  On March 2019, after Aria was rotated out in the Rotation format, her restriction was lifted in the Unlimited format, making OTK Roach one of the most powerful combo decks in the Unlimited format alongside with a few powerful arsenal in their tools in the Steel Rebellion expansion (see below)
• After the above limitations clipping the strength of two popular aggro decks in Unlimited, the next menace to show up and start dominating is Dimension Shift and Daria. The one card propping them up: Mysterian Knowledge, a cheap spell that generates another cheap spell, turning into two flexible Spellboosts for one card slot. Said options coming out of Mysterian Knowledge are either a nice removal spell or an on-curve Ward, smoothing out both decks' weakness to aggro. To curb this while minimizing impacts on Rotation, Mysterian Knowledge was restricted to one copy in Unlimited in January 2018, about one week after the previous balance changes.
• Skull Ring is a card has been a common staple card for many Shadowcraft decks in both formats since its introduction. It was a 3pp countdown amulet that spawns 2 Skeletons, with a Reanimate 2 ability when it expires. While there was a Necromancy 2 cost to that last effect, just dealing with the Skeletons alone pays for the cost, and this combos very well with Shadowcraft's high-value 2-cost followers such as Lady Grey, Belenus, and Andrealphus. Curving Skull Ring into Prince Catacombs led to a very stubborn board and lots of Shadows over time, and was a powerful play going first. Furthermore, Skull Ring had wonderful applications in the Atomy deck as it fills the board enough to let you play Atomy on turn 3 with minimal investment. To cripple the strength of Unlimited midrange Shadow (and with the side effect of shutting down early Atomy highrolls), Skull Ring would be bumped up to 4pp after 25 November 2018, and compensated with its Necromancy cost removed.

Dawnbreak Nightedge

It should be noted that unlike the previous expansions, because many of the most powerful cards in Rise of Bahamut were Rotated out (more specifically, incredibly powerful board wipes like the titular Bahamut and many non-targeted follower removals like Lurching Corpse and Necroassassin) there isn't a specific class or deck that have an advantage over another. However, there are several cards and decks have been proven too powerful, if not flatout broken.

Rotation, April-May 2018

• Midrange Sword, a deck archetype that had lost popularity since the Darkness Evolved meta, have seen a massive resurgence thanks to the new powerful tools introduced in this expansion (combined with many of the powerful board wipes and non-targeted removals rotating out). While aggro Sword lost their iconic Storm follower, midrange Sword is compensated with powerful new cards using the new Choose mechanic. Celia, Sky Commander can either flood the board or close games with Storm damage. Valse, Magical Marksman creates bullets that either banishes followers and amulets or destroys weakened followers. Perhaps the most broken card in Sword's arsenal is Chromatic Duel, which creates either a Rush follower that spawns Knights when attacking or a follower who protects your board from non-combat damage. When you enhance Chromatic Duel, though, not only do you get both Choose options, you also get 6pp back, meaning the Sword player can continue to play on curve after getting both Queens for free. And while your opponent is negotiating what you've done on turn 6, you can proceed to follow up with strong turn 7 and 8 plays, like creating a board flood with Arthur before buffing for victory with Walfrid. In fact, midrange Sword is proven to be so powerful that it is actually better than midrange Shadow due to having a better early game than Shadow and their followers having better value than Shadow's followers.
  • Midrange Sword managed to dominate the game by the launch of Brigade of the Sky, especially when Chromatic Duel on turn 6 allowed one to perpetuate a damage-resistant board with Black Queen right after Charlotta's effect would expire on the turn before, on top of still having the space to slip in a 2-drop. For a board-reliant class that Swordcraft is, getting two back-to-back turns of boardwipe resistance can let them snowball in advantage. Chromatic Duel's powerful Enhance cost would be pushed up to 8, forcing the player to have a little more foresight when choosing between either queen in the earlier turns. This nerf would be reverted in mid-2019, after Chromatic Duel rotated out.
  • Valse's incredible flexibility for a reasonable 3pp 2/2 did not go unnoticed either. His stats would be reduced to 2/1, making him a very weak follower that can be shut down by even the weakest of followers. This nerf didn't last long, though, and Valse would be reverted to a 2/2 on 26 September 2018 after Sword sank to among the lowest play rates in Rotation.
• Competing with Midrange Sword for the title of strongest deck in Dawnbreak Nightedge is Summit Haven, a midrange deck built around the titular Summit Temple, which causes attacking allied followers to deal damage based on their defense instead of their attack. This allows the deck to hit face for as much as 9 storm damage in a single turn thanks to Heavenly Knight. While this deck has been around since Summit's debut in Chronogenesis, the rotation of many of the most efficient removals in the Chronogenesis meta such as Lurching Corpse, Necroassassin and Bahamut have made the relative power level of this deck and the high-defense followers it uses surge.
  
  In Dawnbreak Nightedge, Summit temple received three new cards. First we have Moriae Encomium, a 2pp countdown amulet that cycles itself when played, then destroying a random enemy follower two turns later, helping to compensate for the loss of Tribunal of Good and Evil, which rotated out with DBNE's release. Next, we have Jeweled Priestess, a 2pp 1/2 which gives you a choice of adding a White Diamond for card draw or Black Diamond for a source of heal and burn into your hand. Both of these amulets are 1pp, so are easy to fit into a curve at some point, and make this card as good a turn 3 play as a turn 2 one.
  
  Finally, we have Ceryneian Hind, a 5pp 3/5 that searches an amulet whenever it attacks. While this isn't particularly impressive in itself, Hind has two powerful Choose forms available to it whenever you have two or more amulets in play. Ceryneian Lighthind has Rush and heals itself at the end of the turn, so it can take out an enemy follower and still be healthy enough to warrant at least a 2-for-1 trade; it's even stronger with Summit Temple. However, the real reason people run this deer is for Ceryneian Darkhind. In this form, instead of getting Rush, it reduces the countdown of all amulets on the Summit player's side of the board by 2, often allowing them to advance most of their countdown amulets to create a tanky board or replenish card advantage. Finally, to top it all off, this form also has Bane, making trading into it with your own followers extremely painful.
  
  After a few weeks into the expansion, however, Summit Temple slowly began to phase out from being one of the top tier decks, as many players responded to the Summit Haven's strengths by responding with Neutral Ginger Rune and various aggro decks such as aggro Forest to curb Summit Temple's dominance.
• Bahamut rotating out caused Neutral Rune decks built around Worldwielder Ginger to ascend from Joke Character to Lethal Joke Character, as Ginger can easily spit out overstated high-cost followers such as Israfil and Zeus in one go without worry of getting wiped in response. Though she would be due to rotate out by the very next pack, her one format of relevance was also one of notoriety, as said board is very difficult to answer. If the player has managed to save any evolve points, Wandering Bard Elta will most likely be evolved to prevent any Fanfare effects, making a counterattack or an answer even more inconvenient.
• Artifact/Midrange Portalcraft decks only got one new addition, Miriam, Synthetic being; however, it's the only addition that the deck needs. When played in Resonance, she can either put two powerful artifacts in the deck or search an artifact from your deck, all for the low cost of two play points. The former gives the deck more win conditions (which the deck was previously lacking in), while the former helps the consistency of the deck. In addition, Portalcraft loses almost nothing from Rise of Bahamut rotating out, while other classes lose counters that previously kept the deck in check (such as the aforementioned Bahamut). However, Artifact Portalcraft fell out of the meta when players responded to its dominance by playing aggro Forest with Wood of Brambles (especially after the mini-expansion was release).

Rotation, June 2018

The release of the mini-expansion supposed to help keep the Shadowverse meta fresh to minimize Complacent Gaming Syndrome by the third month of the quarter. With that being said, an introduction of one card may sometimes change the course the meta (and in the case for Forestcraft, two):

• Vengeance Blood got a new powerful arsenal with Waltz, King of Wolves, which grants the player a Blood Moon amulet. When the amulet is played on the next turn when Waltz is alive, the said follower will automatically evolve. It may seem Awesome, but Impractical at first due to the massive tempo loss when playing an amulet, but if a sturdy Ward such as Spiderweb Imp is protecting Waltz, the opponent will most definitely be taking a 5/4 evolved Waltz to the face. And this doesn't account for other various Vengeance cards like Dark Airjammer, Vania, Nightshade Vampire, and Dark General, which gain full benefit for the next 3 turns without the risk of dropping your health to 10.
• Whitefrost Dragonewt Filene is considered to be the most powerful card released for Dragoncraft in the mini-expansion because of her sheer versatility as a 2 play point follower. While her evolve stats aren't that impressive (2/4 on evolve), her evolve effect and the spell she grants to the player makes up for it. Her evolve effect pings 1 damage to an enemy follower akin to the rotated out Lyrial, Celestial Archer's evolve effect and the spell she bestows to the player when she is played instantly destroys any damaged follower akin to Siegfried's effect, meaning she can either destroy an enemy follower on her evolve turns thanks to the evolve ping damage, or can save the spell for later to destroy a large threat in the lategame, or maybe even come out on top of the midgame by killing a damaged evolved follower without expending one themselves. In fact, two of Dragoncraft's main decks in Rotation (Prime Keeper Dragon and Lindwurm ramp Dragon) rose from So Okay, It's Average tier to the top tier deck in the Rotation format and the most played decks in tournaments alike thanks to the introduction of one card.
• Aggro Forestcraft in the mini-expansion was given Storied Falconer, a 2pp follower that gives the player a token follower, Skystride Raptor, and has an evolve effect that gives all Skystride Raptors Bane. While aggro Forestcraft has proven to be one of the strongest aggro decks in Rotation, the introduction of Storied Falconer gives aggro Forestcraft an extra push of face damage that can sometimes also assassinate big wards. Tempo and Control Forestcraft decks were also given Greenglen Axeman, a 7pp 6/5 follower with Rush that gives the player an effect where 2 damage is dealt to the enemy leader at the end of the player's turn if at least 3 or more cards were played on the same time (which is also stackable), thus giving Tempo and Control Forestcraft an extra push of chip damage to the enemy leader for their lategame finishers such as King Elephant and Jungle Warden.
• Previously, a Tenko's Shrine deck would function somewhat similarly to the Elana's Prayer deck of the past, but it suffered from a general lack of repeated healing effects to proc the amulet — not to mention the large tempo loss from just playing Shrine on turn 4. However, the addition of Whitefang Temple changed a lot. Being a 3pp amulet with an end-of-turn heal lets the player curve perfectly into Tenko's Shrine the turn after, with the healing triggering Shrine's damage effect to offset the tempo loss, and a guaranteed 2 damage to random followers over 3 to 4 turns can easily force the opponent onto the defensive without even expending an evolve. Even when the deck couldn't draw into Tenko's Shrine in time, the Temple's synergy with leader healing or regenerating followers let it quickly spawn a 6/6 body that can help to either beat face or hold the line until the player drew Tenko's Shrine. Whitefang Temple pretty much single-handedly gave the Tenko's Shrine deck an enormous boost that made it very popular in both Rotation and Unlimited — in Rotation, the pings can suppress the wide boards of PDK Dragon and get free face damage on anything that neglects to develop their own board; in Unlimited, the healing works in tandem with Tenko's Shrine to extinguish all but the most aggressive of strategies and even get free leader damage on the loathed Dimension Shift decks that don't run a lot of followers.
  
  The dominance of Tenko Shrine decks in Rotation during the first two weeks after the launch of Brigade of the Sky was due to the incredible synergy between cards new and old. Because of the ability to curve Whitefang into Tenko's Shrine and gain a fair amount of tempo through repeated pings, Tenko's Shrine would be raised from 4pp to 5pp, putting it on par with Support Cannon and making it a very significant tempo reduction, especially when the opponent gets a chance to evolve their follower to let them sponge at least one ping before Tenko's Shrine comes down.

Unlimited

• Roach OTK continues to thrive in Unlimited with the new addition of Flower of Fairies, a new amulet which gives card draw and generates Fairy Wisps without needing Aria's help. An alternate build even sprung up with Grasshopper Conductor, opening up the ability for a Roach deck to run other forms of early-game followers (provided they don't have 1 attack). Most notably, this allowed Dungeoncrawl Fairy to see play, as she can serve as an emergency bounce to recycle a pre-combo Roach or bounce Flower of Fairies to set up more Wisps.
• With the development of the Burial Rite archetype to support Reanimate shadow, one old card began tearing up the ranks in Unlimited: Ceridwen. Her old Evolve ability lets her reanimate the highest-cost destroyed follower, and was designed before the existence of Burial Rite. She was overlooked then as the best she could reanimate on curve was 4pp tops, and anything larger needed conservation of an evolve point very late into the game. The addition of Burial Rite let a player intentionally set up high-cost followers like literal Lightning Bruiser Zeus or the nigh-unkillable Mordecai on turn 2 or 3 with the use of Gloomy Necromancer or Everdark Strix so that Ceridwen can put them straight on the board on-curve; not a lot of decks can deal with a large threat this early. Not helping matters is how Reanimate is designed — since the mechanic summons a copy of the follower, the deck can use back-to-back Ceridwens to summon multiple heavy-hitters off just one successful Burial Rite, and there's no means of stopping it as there are no means of graveyard interaction. Furthermore, the reanimation shenanigans can fit right into the Atomy deck, as the Burial Rite followers offer consistency in getting what the deck needs while offering alternate win conditions if it can't get Atomy down, leading to Shadow reigning Unlimited as a notorious "high-roll" deck. To balance out the dominance of Atomy decks in Unlimited before the Brigade of the Sky expansion, her evolve effect was changed to read "Reanimate (8)", ensuring Ceridwen can no longer pull Zeus or Lord Atomy on evolve turns and without altering the mechanics of Reanimate in a way that would affect Rotation too.

Take Two

• One of the most powerful cards in this format is the neutral legendary Moon and Sun, which is taking the now rotated out Ultimate Carrot and giving it steroids. The spell has the option to spawn either an Amaterasu or a Tsukuyomi. Both have Clash effects that either heals your leader or damages the enemy leader respectfully. When they die, they simply put a copy of the spell in your hand, turning them into infinite value. On top of that, the spell also has an Enhance effect that boost the stats of the said follower when spawned, making them incredibly hard to deal with in the lategame. A timely banish can prevent them from regenerating, but removal, much less banishment, is difficult to come by in Take Two.
• In Take Two, where games drag on and hands dwindle, cards that endlessly generate threats become greatly valued. The aforementioned Moon and Sun is one of them, but another reviled set of cards is Holy Lion Crystal and a few other cards that generate additional copies of it. The more a player uses Holy Lion Crystal, the larger the tokens generated, and for 5 play points instead of 2, the Crystal creates another copy of itself. This ultimately results in a Haven player having an endless stream of threats for the endgame while the opponent will have to rely on what's on the top of their deck. Also, the three cards are bronze and silver cards, making it very easy for a player to draft multiples of them^note And you can get more than 3 copies of each if you're lucky and basically create a deck revolving around them.

Brigade of the Sky

Brigade of the Sky is the expansion where Tempest of the Gods rotated out, taking many infamously strong cards with it. The new incoming cards, though, would prove their worth and strengthen several decks.

Rotation, July 2018- mid August 2018

• Midrange Swordcraft in this expansion has given two powerful cards in Rotation:
  • The introduction of Charlotta, Tiny Justice saw the revival of the use of Round Table Assembly in midrange Sword, which when used in conjunction with Mars, Silent Flame General, gives Swordcraft a very stubborn Ward that is not only durable, but has an evolve effect that protects Sword's board from any non-combat damage for the turn. Follow up with Magnus who also gives temporary damage negation, and you can ensure the board is very difficult to remove. While she was initially used to fend off the growing Tenko Shrine threat (see below), it was eventually discovered that the non-combat damage prevetion effectively deters most removal spells, giving followers like Mars the one turn they need to prove their worth.
  • Latham, Honorable Knight provides the leader an effect that whenever an allied follower attacks, a Knight will spawn when there are no allied Knights in play and any 1pp follower that comes into play gains Storm. Given's Swordcraft's access to large amount of followers with Rush and Storm, combined with Sword's access to large number of 1pp followers, this allows Swordcraft a fighting chance of retake control of the board and setup the finishing blow with Celia, Despair's Manager.
• In the previous expansion, White Vanara was considered to be Overshadowed by Awesome with Jungle Warden in terms of finishing off the opponent. With Jungle Warden rotated out, Forestcraft is given Korwa, Ravishing Designer to synergize with White Vanara. Korwa bestows a steady supply of Fils, which when 4 or more Fils are played during the match, it grants the follower the ability to attack twice. Now, combined that with White Vanara and 4 or more Fils played, Vanara will auto evolve and attack twice with a 5/6 stat-line AND Ward, making it very similar to an evolved Albert attacking twice for lethal. Suddenly 10 health isn't so safe against Forest anymore...
• Meanwhile, aggro Forest has not lost much in this expansion aside from Beetle Warrior, but was compensated with Metera, whose evolve effect lets her easily dispatch problem targets and Clash effect keeps its hand fresh. By the end of the format, Aggro Forest would morph into Tempo Forest instead, using Greenglen Axeman as a game-closer, and continue to be one of the top decks of the format.
• Just like in Darkness Evolved, matchups against Havencraft turn into a toss-up due to a couple of very popular decks in the meta:
  • Tenko Havencraft is given De La Fille, Gem Princess, which grants the leader a permanent effect of restoring 1 defense to all allies on board, giving a constant supply of healing and a constant proc of Tenko Shrine's effect. She also gives Tenko Havencraft a significant edge against aggro decks since she not only bestow constant heals, but also is a very sturdy Ward that most aggro decks have an incredibly hard time to deal with. While her effect cannot stack, the permanent extra ping from Tenko's Shrine can tremendously blunt an aggro deck's attempts to continue building their board.
  • Meanwhile, the Holy Lion Haven deck gained Prism Swing, a removal spell that also generates a Holy Lion Crystal. The inclusion of a Sealed Tome, a 0pp amulet that cycles itself, pretty much gave the deck sufficient consistency to have at least one Crystal in hand at all times, turning the archetype from "only strong in Take Two" into a notoriously popular aggressive Haven deck that doesn't lose steam in the lategame. To top it off, the deck is one of the few that can easily enable all three effects of Legendary Fighter (see below), and on a good draw it fully empowers him as early as turn 5.
  • Also, just to add to the Confusion Fu, there are some hybrid variants that either try to combine the above two, or mesh the Tenko's Shrine deck with Temple Summit's lategame, just so that you're not in the clear after removing the deck's initial backbone.
  • A commonality between all these decks is the fact that Sealed Tome cost 0pp and refunds itself in card draw, effectively giving all Haven decks a free cycle and letting them work with a 37-card deck, increasing their consistency in getting to what they need. To avert this, Sealed Tome would have its cost raised to 1pp, stopping it from being just a free cycle and perhaps prompting players to use it for any of its Choose forms.
• Portalcraft is given Silva, Ardent Sniper. As a follower, she isn't anything special since she's a 6/5 follower with Ambush that can threaten lethal in later stages of the game. Her Accelerate effect, however, has strong applications for both Puppet and Artifact Portalcraft, as it can put any follower with 3 play points or less from the player's hand into play, give it Rush, and also give the player a permanent effect of dealing 1 damage to the enemy leader the first time their followers attack (not to mention, Silva's Accelerate effect stacks). Given the high amount of Rush followers found within Portalcraft, the opponent can expect to start taking an accumulative damage every turn, giving its playstyle a degree of inevitability. This goes double for Puppet Portalcraft, whose 0-cost Puppets means that the Portal player gets chip damage nearly every turn without sacrificing efficiency. In Puppet Portal mirrors, victory typically goes to the player who gets Silva's effect off sooner and more often. While it is clear many of the Accelerate effects considered to be weaker than their follower counterparts, Silva is one of the few cards where the Accelerate effect is better than the base form.
  • What kept Puppet Portal from getting out of hand in the first few weeks after the expansion's release was its bad matchup against the then-prolific Tenko Haven. The deck would be able to effortlessly heal off Silva's chip damage while clearing out Portal's board at the same time, and if the Portal player neglected to develop their board they would risk taking extra face damage. The nerf to Tenko Haven removed one of Puppet Portal's worst matchups and allowed it to dominate the format, until players remembered how well the healing and Tenko Shrine pings stalls Portal's game plan, even with the nerfs.
  • Puppet Portal's finisher, Noah, is often responsible for closing out games. Being a 3/6 Storm that creates a Puppet on top of buffing all Puppets in hand with +1 attack and Storm, he alone can deal 5 damage out of nowhere, and the damage will scale with more Puppets in reserve. At best, without evolves, Noah with a full field of Puppets deals a total of 11 damage, which can be lethal when taking into account chip damage from Silva. Taking time to conserve Puppets is no big deal, either, as Puppet Portal is often seen playing an untransformed Orchis before Noah, getting 3 free Puppets and essentially ensuring the full Storm damage field. To curb Noah's game-ending ability, his cost would be raised to 10pp after 26 September 2018.
  • Nicholas is also a very good addition to Portal due to sheer card quality. Already a decent 4pp 4/3, he summons an amulet that summons Robomi, guaranteeing a 5/5 Ward on turn 7 at earliest which either lets the player buy time or threaten more face damage. At his Enhance cost of 8, he also immediately triggers all Robomi amulets, so playing a Nicholas on turn 7 and enhancing a second on turn 8 created a lot of value to be used to threaten lethal with, especially when Noah can show up next turn to clean house. Nicholas would be changed to a 5pp 5/4, and his Enhance effect altered to only immediately activate one Robomi amulet, rather than all of them, depriving Puppet Portal of a good 4-drop and forcing him to compete with other turn 5 plays (enhanced Lococo, enhanced Cucouroux, Heartless Battle, Spinaria).
• The Lindworm Dragon deck was a decent contender already in the previous format, but had a few flaws in lack of good draw power and suffered tremendously when it couldn't draw into or finish setting up Lindworm on time. Brigade of the Sky fixed those problems with its two Dragon legendary cards, Zooey and Adramelech. Both their Accelerate forms are very cheap draw spells, allowing the deck to dig for Lindworm or other answers faster on top of counting towards its non-follower requirement. Zooey, in particular, sets up herself as a backup form of burst damage to weaken high-health opponents, with her protection effect pretty much buying a player a free turn so that they can play Lindwurm for lethal. Pyrewyrm Commander also aids the deck's midgame by bestowing up to two removal spells to take the board and eliminate problem targets like the infamous Tenko's Shrine.

Rotation, late August - September 2018

• As if Puppet Portal wasn't popular enough already, they gained Cucouroux, a 3pp 3/2 clearly designed to work with Silva's Accelerate effect. Cucouroux's effect does 2 damage to the enemy follower before resolving combat damage, so putting her out with Silva lets the player safely dispatch most 2-defense 2-drops without sacrificing what they already have on board, which is a very good tempo play. Cucouroux being played for her enhance on turn 5 allows the player to still exploit her ability through an evolve, leaving behind Camieux whose Last Words ability either gives extra chip damage on the opponent or tears up any efforts to go wide.
• Dragoncraft gains Warbreaker Dragoon, which offers good synergy with nearly everything Dragon has at its disposal. A 6pp 5/5 with Rush is already reasonable for controlling the midgame without expending evolves, but his effect is where things get tricky. It reduces the cost of any two Dragoncraft followers in hand while giving them +1/+0, which is perfect for setting up Prime Dragon Keeper or Jabberwock combos. But most frightening is the possibility of the effect discounting a Zooey in hand — formerly, against a Dragon opponent, one would only need to track the number of Zooeys Accelerated (because a standard Zooey is 11pp and is unplayable without cost reduction) or keep watch of any of the rare cost-reduction cards being used before even thinking of the possibility of a Zooey out of nowhere. Warbreaker Dragoon creates another opportunity of a playable base Zooey and makes this wildly unpredictable as nobody has control over what it discounts. This has led to more instances of Dragon players turning a game around simply because they had a very convenient Zooey without any convenient telegraphing.

Unlimited

• While Vengeance Blood is considered very lackluster in Rotation, Vengeance Blood still remains strong in the Unlimited format and gotten a new powerful follower with Vira, Knight Fanatic. Being a 2pp follower, she is a good pull from Dark Airjammer, and doesn't have any beneficial Fanfare which would be negated through Airjammer. Her evolve effect, however, has a lot of value in Vengeance Blood, as she grants the player immunity to all forms of damage while having an effect of subtracting 2 from all damage dealt to her until the end of opponent's turn. Her damage negation effect on both the leader and herself makes her incredibly hard to remove, allowing Vengeance Blood greater survivability on turn 5 and later after dropping their defense down to 10 for Vengeance activation effect. If Dark Airjammer also pulls Spiderweb Imp alongside with her, she's much harder to deal due to the presence of a sturdy Ward that helps protect her.
• Tenko Haven got even worse in Unlimited format since it has access to even more healing cards, turning it into an unholy combination between a Darkness Evolved Elana deck and Starforged Legends Prime Dragon Keeper deck. The pieces were already in place in the previous format, but Sealed Tome and De La Fille simply added more consistency to it. The nerfs to Tenko's Shrine and Sealed Tome set back its power level since.
• Since Eachtar's reversion, midrange Shadow experienced a large surge in popularity. The popular build is not too different from its previous incarnations, but it gained a few great tools from this set.
  • First on the list is Lady Grey. 1/3 Drain is unremarkable for 2pp, but when evolving she performs Reanimate (2) while still enjoying a full +2/+2 bonus during evolution, putting down a fair amount of stats and bodies on the board. A 3-attack Drain follower also provides just enough healing to buy at least 1 turn against an aggressive deck. Shadowcraft already has a fair deal of good 2-drops, but when it leads to the resurrection of Lurching Corpse several more times, it makes it difficult to keep fighting for the board without being forced to expend a boardwipe or two.
  • The mini-expansion introduces Gremory, with an Enhance effect that automatically evolves the Shadow player's entire board. Given how stubborn Shadow's followers are, a late-game Gremory is no different from landing an Eachtar on a developed board. After Midrange Shadow proceeded to dominate Unlimited, Gremory would be restricted to 1 in the format after 26 September 2018, and this restriction would only be removed about a year later.
• OTK Darkfeast Bat (a combo deck that focused on sheer quantities of self-damage to charge its namesake card) was given Evil Eye Demon, a 5pp 5/4 follower with an Accelerate effect which deals 3 damage to an enemy follower and then 1 damage the leader. On top of having 4 guaranteed self-pings for each Bloodfed Flowerbed its player draws and uses, Evil Eye Demon's Accelerate effect pretty much means that the deck has access to six copies of Snarling Chains for good board control. When the going gets tough against wide boards, the evolve effect can singlehandedly wipe the opponent's field, buying enough time for Darkfeast Bat to land the finishing blow. OTK Darkfeast went to accompany the aforementioned Midrange Shadow as one of the most popular decks during the Unlimited Grand Prix in September 2018.
  
  Darkfeast Bat became an incredibly strong archetype in both Rotation and Unlimited with the Lust archetype in Omen of the Ten, such that it could reliably deliver lethal as early as turn 7. After dominating the meta in both formats, Darkfeast Bat would be nerfed from 7pp to 8pp to delay the finishing blow and allowing more counterplay such as Heartless Battle and the buffed Godsworn Alexiel

Take Two

• Abyss Summoner is by far Rune's strongest card in Take Two. Already a reasonable 7pp 6/6, she summons either a regenerating Storm follower or resilient Ward follower when played while the deck is at 20 cards or less. The smaller deck sizes in the format practically guarantee that Rune will trigger her ability on curve, and her being a silver card makes it very easy to draft multiple copies. Quite the comeback after Rune's history as one of the worst classes in the format. The Steel Rebellion update would eventually increase Abyss Summoner's cost to 8, making her less efficient.

Omen of the Ten

The launch of this set is matched with the loathed Wonderland Dreams leaving Rotation. However, Omen also sets new baseline standards, showing that Power Creep didn't fully leave the design direction of newer sets.

Rotation

• OTK Darkfeast Bat, a deck that is relatively strong in Unlimited, found its way into the Rotation format with the entire Lust archetype, giving Darkfeast Bat enough sources of 1-point self-damage to charge up Darkfeast Bat without putting itself in too much danger. OTK Darkfeast turned from a primarily from a combo deck into an aggressive tempo deck in the early game with the Darkfeast Bat combo in the lategame, such that if the Darkfeast player draws well and puts out enough pressure on their opponent's life, they can finish with a medium-strength Darkfeast hit even after their board has been cleaned out. Out of these new additions, the problematic cards often talked about are Disciple of Lust and Flauros.
  • Disciple of Lust is an incredibly good early game follower, and if the opponent fails to answer her immediately, she can get at least three attacks in and accumulate three checks of self-damage, almost the equivalent of its Unlimited key card, Bloodfed Flowerbed. Two of her on the board and the Blood player's accumulated five by the time she gets answered, and when Disciple dies she still gets one extra point of damage in to push the opponent that little bit closer towards Darkfeast lethal.
  • Flauros is not only overstatted with a beneficial Last Words that prevents his player from dying too quickly, he can be played from the deck if his player damages themselves 4 times on their turn. This can be done as early as turn 2 or 3 when supplanted with 0pp cards that deals self damage such as Gift of Bloodkin and Restless Parish, and his presence demands that he be answered immediately before he starts swinging for 5 damage, which in turn distracts board control attempts away from the rest of the Blood player's board, letting them continue pressuring the opponent for a faster Darkfeast lethal. He also has a nasty Last Words effect that heals the leader, meaning any form of self-damage on that same turn can easily be mitigated, especially when he is evolved. Flauros's effect would hence be changed at the end of October 2018, preventing it from activating anywhere before turn 3.
  • Wings of Lust didn't receive much attention due to it being under maintenance for the first three days after the launch of Omen, but after it was fixed it became an incredible addition to the deck, bestowing a sizeable +2/+2 buff and a self-damage drawback which pretty much is what the Darkfeast Bat deck wants. Wings played on Disciple when she begins swinging lets her plow into the opponent's life total a lot faster. Wings on an evolving Vira creates a supremely stubborn 6/6 who neutralizes the first instance of self-damage and becomes nigh-impossible to deal with barring hard removal. Enhanced Wings also bestows Drain, letting the Blood player effortlessly heal off the damage they're doing to themselves, making them that much harder to kill before Darkfeast Bat delivers the killing blow.
• Dragoncraft is given Galmieux, Omen of Disdain, which has an Enhance effect dealing 1 damage to all followers on board as well as an auto-evolve effect where she automatically evolve whenever she takes damage, meaning that her Enhance effect will always evolve her. When evolved, she has a nasty effect of dealing 3 damage to a random enemy follower and 3 damage to the enemy leader whenever she takes damage. Given the new tools that Dragon is given to abuse this such as Disciple of Disdain and Disdainful Rending, it is possible for Gaimieux to deal 9 damage to the enemy leader and clear the entire board at the same time. If Gaimeiux isn't enough, Dragoncraft is also given Apostle of Disdain, a humble 1/5 4pp follower with Storm that gains +2/+0 whenever this follower takes damage, meaning under the right setup, Apostle of Disdain can easily deal up to 13 damage.
  
  Galmieux's ability to clear off wide boards with low power did not go unnoticed. This became especially potent when, after successfully trading off an enemy follower, her user follows up with another damaging effect to utterly demolish enemy boards. To rein in her strength after nerfing the dominant Darkfeast Bat and midrange Sword at the end of October 2018, Galmieux would have a once-per-turn restriction applied to her effect.
• Midrange Sword, a deck that sunk to very low play rates towards the end of the Brigade format, experienced a massive comeback with the Usurpation package in Omen on top of nerfs to Puppet Portal and the reversion of Valse's nerf. The new "Loot" mechanic from the Usurption package comprises of token spells that only cost 1pp that either deal 1 damage to an enemy follower, restore 2 defense to an ally, bestow Rush to an allied follower, or boost an allied follower's stats. While they are randomly generated, each one has enough utility to aid Sword's board control and longevity without needlessly expending evolve points. Previously, Puppet Portal's strength in the Brigade format had held Midrange Sword back, but the new additions and changes to playstyles now give Midrange Sword the advantage in the matchup. The numerous tools it has also allows midrange Sword to fare well in many matchups, only losing out to the board-clearing ability of Disdain Dragon, detailed above.
  • Servant of Usurpation is a 2pp 1/1 follower that is seen as a replacement to the now rotated out Bladed Hedgehog. He has a Clash ability where he gains +1/+1 and generates Loot. This stat gain with his Clash ability allows him to effectively take no damage from 1-attack followers like Puppets and Ghosts, which makes him incredibly irritating for the Puppet player to dispatch, and should the player roll a Gilded Goblet, he can be healed, making him even harder to trade down.
  • Octrice, Omen of Usurpation is seen as an MVP for midrange Sword. She is a 3pp 2/3 legendary follower who steals Last Words effects, which many people initially dismissed her as simply a counter to Shadowcraft decks (a class that is reliant on Last Words effects). When OTK Darkfeast Bat became one of the most dominant decks in Rotation, many midrange Sword players were quick to include her in their decks because her ability to steal the healing Last Words of an enemy Flauros. Even when Flauros is not present, the ability to snatch away smaller effects like Purehearted Singer's card draw can create significant shifts in card advantage and denying Last Words effects from Shadow gives Sword a significant advantage over Shadow in the matchup. Her other abilities are very powerful as well — evolving her creates two Loot cards to help contest the board, and if Enhanced for 8pp she gets +2/+2, can be evolved for free and refunds 2pp to let the player use her Loot immediately. All this makes Octrice a good play at nearly any point in the game, to the point that she has usurped Mars's spot in many decks.
  • Apostle of Usurpation is a gold 4/5 5pp follower that already does 1 damage on Fanfare, and continues to do additional damage to enemy followers as his user plays more Loot cards. Already a solid body on turn 5, he starts to shine on turn 6 or later, where a player who's stored up Loot cards can easily use him to annihilate a wide board. This is what helps Sword take back the board in matchups against aggro Forest or opposing Sword players.
  • Despite being released all the way back in Chronogenesis, Arthur, Knight King has been the centerpiece of midrange Sword, filling the board on turn 7 right after the point where most players have expended their evolutions. With careful selection of 2pp Swordcraft followers, Arthur on turn 7 could reliably fill out a board that demanded a good boardwipe to dispatch, on top of filtering away poor topdecks to strengthen the deck's lategame. Even if the board got wiped immediately, Arthur's strong defense (being a 2/6) will ensure that he can stick around for a buff on turn 8. After being a centrepiece of midrange Sword across all Rotation formats, Arthur was finally nerfed to an 8pp 3/7, forcing this power play to contend with several other important moves for Swordcraft at 8pp. This nerf would eventually be reverted when Arthur left Rotation.
• Even though the deck is not as potent as its Unlimited version, midrange Shadow (which is sometimes referred as Arcus Shadow) continued to be a contender in Rotation, due to Cerberus, Hound of Hades giving an easy board flood that would then be empowered by Gremory the turn after if not answered swiftly. In the late game, an Arcus deck would also pair Gremory with Ferry for a nasty 10pp burst damage combo — summon 2 Ghosts with a 2pp follower, use Ferry to give them three attacks, and then evolve them all with Gremory to deliver a total of 25 damage to an undefended opponent. Gremory's power in Rotation would see that she would get another nerf in October 2018, this time raising her Enhance cost from 6 to 7. The nerf works twofold: First, Gremory won't be able to follow up on a Cerberus board, and in the late game, the raised cost will interfere with the burst damage combo — one less evolved Ghost with three attacks means its potential drops from 25 to 16 damage.
• Truth's Adjudication is the latest addition to the Spellboost Rune archetype. For a costly 6pp, it generates a 3/3 Ward, then gives it a buff, heals your leader, and damages the enemy leader. How much it does each depends on how many times it's been spellboosted. The most infuriating bit about this is that the game distributes the spellboosts randomly, and the player doesn't even know what it'll do until they cast the spell. Stories range from the player gaining a large amount of healing to undo an aggressive opponent's work, getting a nigh-insurmountable Golem that smashes the opponent's face in next turn, or just getting surprise lethal damage. The sheer difficulty in working around what it can do ends up in the Rune player winning normally unfavored matchups.
• Gilnelise, Omen of Craving can be arguably considered to be one of the most powerful followers in the game for decks that tend to be board centric (such as midrange Sword, aggro Forest, and even some Artifact Portalcraft lists). Though considered strong since her reveal, the community didn't realize how powerful she is later when people realize she can be tutored by Lyria, Azure Maiden to buff a full board for huge damage. She also has both Ambush to protect herself from removal and Drain to give yourself a bit more survivability. Her card draw effect on the tenth turn onward is completely overshadowed, but the extra card draw helps the player extend into the lategame, even in classes that generally don't have strong card draw (such as Swordcraft). The only classes that don't fully benefit Gilnelise are Dragoncraft, Bloodcraft, Runecraft, and Havencraft; but that is because the former two already have strong win conditions that wouldn't warrant them to use her (such as Azi Dahaka for Dragon and Darkfeast Bat for Blood), while the later two isn't as follower centric as the other classes.
  
  Perhaps the biggest offender of the use of Gilnelise is Arcus Shadowcraft, the staple midrange/combo deck in Rotation. With Arcus, Ghostly Manager's effect active on the leader, an Enhanced Lyria will tutor Gilnelise and refund just enough play points to use her rightaway. Lyria would also be converted into two Ghosts, ready to attack the enemy leader or contest the board with Gilnelise's buff. Not only that, Gilnelise herself help contribute to the OTK combo gameplan, as her Ambush ability allows her to setup lethal damage in subsequent turns when Arcus's effect is active. If the player manages to survive around turn 10 with Gilnelise on board, she draw the cards needed to setup the turn 10 lethal with Ferry and Gremory. Even without Arcus factored in, it is very easy to setup boards with Gilnelise's attack boost effect thanks to the utilization of Cerberus, Hound of Hades and Charon's evolve effect (which the tokens spawned by Cerberus have Last Words that help contribute to the OTK turn).

Rotation, late November 2018 - December 2018

• Mysteria Burn was a contender in the early months before the other stronger decks took hold, but became quite strong when Grea transferred into the card set. Already an efficient 3pp 2/3 Ward follower who easily displaces the much weaker Vayle in the same cost slot, Grea fills in a gap in defenses and consistency in the archetype, contributing to the game plan of discounting the archetype's signature followers Anne and Miranda. Grea's Evolve effect is no slouch, either, creating one of two Mysteria spells: Grea's Ember is an efficient single target removal, while Grea's Inferno tears up a wide board when boosted by Mysteria herself. All this amounts to is a deck that can easily destroy the opposition with burn damage and free sizeable bodies before finishing off with a massive Anne's Sorcery, and this became a very prevalent deck in the Omen Rotation Grand Prix shortly after the mini-expansion's launch.
• While Forestcraft was given a Rescued from the Scrappy Heap with the Yggdrasil buff that allowed the common aggro Forestcraft to evolve into a more midrange/tempo style Forestcraft decks, it wasn't enough to contest with the top tier decks. That being said, the mini-expansion gave Forestcraft two powerful cards to utilize in their Tempo and midrange decks:
  • One of the biggest weaknesses of Luxglaive Bayle is that he is required to be in the player's starting hand in order to make full use of his play point discount effect. The mini-expansion fixes this problem with Liza, Queen of the Forest, who is more or less a better stated Purehearted Singer. She has a Fanfare effect of drawing the lowest cost Forestcraft follower into the player's hand and have a Last Words effect of drawing the highest cost Forestcraft follower into the player's hand at the start of the player's next turn. Her Last Words effect allows the player to consistently draw Luxglaive Bayle into the player's hand while her Fanfare effect allows the player to consistently tutor Tia, Crystalian Noble. In the Unlimited format, her Fanfare effect allowing the player to pull Rhinoceroach effectively replaced Goblin Mage due to her sheer versatility.
  • Lily, Crystalian Conductor is a 1/1 2pp follower, with 2/2 evolve stats, that is mostly seen as a more "fair" version of Elf Song. She buffs the player's followers on board with +1 attack if 2 or more cards were played and +1 defense if 4 or more cards were played on the same turn. Her evolve effect, however, is something that should not be ignored, as she buffs an allied follower +2/+2 to another allied follower regardless of how many cards were played. Combined with Forestcraft's ability to flood the board and used in conjunction with Elf Song, Lily can effective buff an entire board and create a threatening follower on board. If the player manages to have a discounted Bayle in their hand, it is possible to have a powerful 7/7 Ward on board that most decks will have a hard time dealing with.
• Masamune, Raging Dragon is a 2pp 2/2 Dragoncraft follower with Bane. If played while the player has 10 play point orbs, he also grants Rush and temporary damage immunity to all allied Dragoncraft followers, himself included His Fanfare effect has strong synergy with Poseidon, which allows Dragoncraft to simultaneously establish a tanky board and clear the opponent's. His own Bane also lets him just assassinate any high-defense target that Poseidon or his followers cannot kill. Being a 2pp follower, he also has strong synergy with Prime Dragon Keeper, which allows PDK decks to clear off any remaining followers on board that survived the Prime Dragon Keeper's onslaught. Oh, and because Shadowverse counts taking 0 damage as surviving damage, he easily synergizes with most of Dragon's Disdain package, giving them free use of their effects at no penalty to their current defense, allowing Dragoncraft to effectively shut down most midrange and aggro decks in the Rotation format.

Unlimited

• In the Unlimited format, Shadowcraft is given Cerberus, Hound of Hades, a 5pp follower that spawns two tokens: a 1/2 follower with a Last Words effect that heals your leader and a 2/1 follower with a Last Words effect that damages the enemy leader. She also packs a powerful evolve effect that grants all allied followers a Last Words effect similar to Belenus's Last Words effect. Given that she's a perfect on-curve play to follow up with Enhanced Gremory or Prince Catacombs (providing if Cerberus or the tokens survive), it can easily be explained why Gremory was chosen as the card to be limited to 1 in the Unlimited format as opposed to Lady Grey. Not helping matters is that Charon from the same set also is designed to tutor Cerberus, with an evolve effect making her free and basically singlehandedly building a board for buffs next turn.
• OTK Darkfeast Bat was already established as a strong contender in Unlimited in the previous format, and the Lust archetype that caused it to break out in Rotation simply pushed its strength in Unlimited even more. Bloodcraft's plentiful sources of self-damage in its earlier cards make it much easier to activate Flauros's Invocation effect. Even worse when Flauros is protected by a sturdy Ward that self-damages the player (such as Spiderweb Imp). All this would be tempered with the nerfs to Flauros and Darkfeast Bat, detailed above.
  
  The introduction to the Lust package brought forth another variation of aggro Blood that aims to get Flauros on board around turn 3 (even after his nerf), with the combination of Bloodfed Flowerbed and low-cost self damaging effects available in Unlimited. The player do not need to wait until turn 8 to finish the player off with Darkfeast Bat. Sometimes, getting Flauros out around turn 3 is enough to win you games (especially if he's protected with such as Spiderweb Imp), and the aggro deck can resort to burst damage from Storm followers Valnareik, Omen of Lust and Dark General should Flauros be answered (since the player would have done enough self-damage to fulfill their effects).
• Mysteria Rune gained Anne, Mysterian Prodigy, and one of the cards she grants is a 10pp Anne's Sorcery, which does damage equal to the number of Mysteria cards played during the match. While the Sorcery's burst damage is usually counterbalanced by the fact that you have to wait till turn 10 or later to cast it, it being a spell without Spellboost creates a devastating combo with Wizardess of Oz, as she'll reduce its colossal pp cost to 1. Suddenly, being at full health or at any earlier turn won't save you from suddenly dying from an Anne's Sorcery or two. Not helping matters is how Mysteria cards in Unlimited also include several cost-reducting Spellboost followers from Rise of Bahamut, so even if the deck doesn't draw Anne, it can still overwhelm by dropping a large amount of low-cost stats on the board akin to the Daria decks of old.
• Due to the faster pace of the Unlimited meta, Dragoncraft is more or less forced into aggro decks that will allow them to contest the board in the early game. Subsequent expansions, including the Disdain package, amplified the ability to flood the board with multiple threats (such as Aqua Nereid, Dragon Alfcionado, Waters of the Orca, and Serpent Drake). This then synergized perfectly with Aggro Dragon's endgame involving Storm followers that scale with a wide board. One of Dragoncraft's followers, Hippogryph Rider, allows Dragoncraft to take advantage of their board flood with a strong Storm follower that can snowball hard and deal a lot of face damage that most decks would have a hard time dealing with. To balance out Aggro Dragoncraft's midgame burst damage, her play point cost was increased from 5 to 6 after November 2018, putting her at odds with Dragoncraft's other burst damage Storm followers such as Phoenix Rider Aina and Dark Dragoon Forte.

Take Two

• Weathered Vanguard was a 3pp 2/3 bronze Commander who summoned three 2/2 Steelclad Knights at his Enhance cost of 7. While normally unremarkable in constructed and usually played as a backup Arthur, in Take Two, his board-flooding ability pushed Sword's win rates above the others. Him being a bronze card also meant that drafting in multiples him is very easy. Thus, at the end of October 2018, he would summon 1/2 Heavy Knights instead, to reel in his power.

Altersphere

Rotation, late December 2018 - February 2019

• One of the most exciting cards in the set is Prince of Cocytus, who, like his Classic counterpart, replaces your deck with a set of Purposely Overpowered cards. The Cocytus deck is actually much stronger than the Apocalypse deck, since it contains a wide variety removal, healing, and card draw of different costs to let a player easily stage a comeback should they make it that far. The more troubling part is that he is easily tutored with Lyria, and it wasn't long before Dragoncraft made use of every single ramp tool at their disposal to get to play him as soon as possible.
• Perhaps the strongest addition to Dragoncraft in general was Vile Violet Dragon. Bearing resemblance to Servant of Disdain, Vile Violet Dragon draws two cards each time it survives taking damage. As it has twice as much defense as Servant of Disdain, a Dragon player can easily use their multitude of 1-damage pings to hit Vile Violet Dragon twice or more, easily drawing a ton of cards and refilling their hand after expending a lot of their resources in accelerating their play points. It also helps them draw their way into either Prince of Cocytus or Lyria, nearly guaranteeing that the Cocytus deck is enabled in due time. Because of this, Vile Violet Dragon's play point cost was increased from 5 to 6 as of January 15th, 2019, to restrict the combos that can be feasibly played with it.
• Mysterian Rune remains an incredibly strong yet cheap deck, with lists that don't even require any legendary cards (not even Mysteria herself), making the deck incredibly prevalent, especially in the Altersphere Rotation Grand Prix. The problematic cards are still Anne and Ms. Miranda who enjoy cost reductions as the player plays Mysteria cards that easily comprise over half the deck, especially when some of those cards generate Mysteria token spells of their own. The general compatibility with cost-reduction Spellboost mechanics (especially Zealot of Truth, detailed below) didn't help, and neither did the addition of more Mysteria cards (Tico and Palla) that still generate more Mysteria tokens, which only helped to aid the deck's consistency.
  
  Ms. Miranda was introduced during the Brigade of the Skies mini-expansion that gave Mysteria some spotlight, which allowed Mysteria to get a huge tempo swing. Her evolve effect also gives the player a burn spell that adds an extra sturdy Ward to further deny any aggression. This was not as much of a problem until Anne and Grea were introduced, and they synergized perfectly with her in both reducing her cost and giving an endgame to the tokens she makes. On a perfect draw it's not unusual to see someone play Miranda as early as turn 4 while still having enough pp left over to play most other things, including one of her token spells. To curb Mysteria's midgame tempo, her play point cost was increased from 6 to 7, increasing the amount of effort needed to replicate the tempo swing.
• While spellboost Runecraft decks lost their lategame finisher Giant Chimera and their essential Magic Owl, they weren't left completely helpless. In fact, Altersphere introduced cards that turned the concept of Spellboost on its head. Raio, Omen of Truth and Prophetess of Creation, cards that were once considered Awesome, but Impractical, have seen regular play in spellboost Rune decks. And much like Mysteria, Spellboost Rune has enough power to shut down aggro, midrange, and Arcus Shadow in Rotation:
  • Edict of Truth, fittingly, has incredibly strong synergy with Raio. Formerly, the deck suffered from the need to draw all its Raio-boosted cards to begin establishing board dominance. Edict easily remedies that with an instant hand refill, giving the player access to many of the cards that Raio's affected. On top of that, if Edict's been spellboosted 9 or more times, it refunds the play points needed to cast it, letting the player also play literally everything else that they've drawn. Edict is great both in the deck or hand — if in the deck, Raio will boost it to its threshold when he's played; if in the hand, the player will still be able to spellboost it with the usual methods.
  • Sweet-Tooth Medusa is considered to be superior to her original Bloodcraft incarnation — a Rune deck can supply enough boosts to summon Medusiana, and clear off any midrange boards during the mid- to late-game. Much like Edict of Truth, she has strong synergy with Raio, as he can spellboost her enough to guarantee Medusiana being summoned.
  • Eleanor, Cosmic Flower is a 3pp 3/3 who immediately boosts a card until it's been spellboosted three times, instantly charging anything that's just been drawn and making her a suitable replacement for Magic Owl. On evolving, she bestows the player with Splendid Conjury, a cheap, strong removal spell that gets even stronger when spellboosted. Like Timeworn Mage Levi from the days of old, Eleanor is an incredibly flexible follower, either capable of causing a 2-for-1 tempo swing for a player going second, or creating a very potent removal spell for the later turns.
  • Zealot of Truth is seen as a Runecraft version of Albert, Levin Saber — a 9pp 3/5 with Storm, only exchanging a powerful Enhance ability for the ability to discount himself when being spellboosted. This means spellboost and Mysteria Rune can play multiple heavily discounted Zealot of Truths to establish midgame tempo or used to finish the opponent off in the lategame. Made worse when he's used in conjunction with Craving's Splendor for massive burst damage in the mid to lategame.
• While midrange Sword in this expansion wasn't as strong when compared to its peak in previous formats, Token-centric midrange Sword was given Blazing Lion Admiral, who plays himself straight from the deck if the player begins their turn with 15 or more destroyed followers. Already a respectable 7pp 4/5, he comes with Rush so that he can clean up on the turns where both players have expended evolves, and he also gives a +1/+1 boost to all other allied followers while attacking. If Latham's leader effect is active, the Knight is summoned before Admiral's boost takes effect, bestowing the player with an additional 2/2 with Storm for more board pressure or trading power. On top of that, Aether played on turn 6 will generally guarantee the player can draw him, forcing the opponent to quickly answer the Sword player's existing board before Admiral comes down... but killing their tokens will contribute to Admiral's Invocation anyway. Token Sword, due to being able to out-pressure Mysteria Rune, became increasingly popular and its strength could not be ignored during the Altersphere Rotation Grand Prix. After 15 January 2019, Admiral would be nerfed to an 8pp 4/4, once again putting this card into Sword's already-crowded 8pp slot, but also injuring the ability for Aether to reliably tutor Latham on turn 7.

Rotation, February 2019

• Portalcraft gains a new finisher in the form of Maisha, Hero of Purgation. She can't attack the enemy leader on her own, but she does provide card draw on Fanfare so excess copies are not superfluous. When evolved, she drops the inability to attack enemy face, and creates Purgation's Blade, a 7-cost spell that gives +4/+0 and Storm to a follower. However, if that spell is used on Maisha herself, the attack buff becomes equal to the number of followers that have been destroyed. On paper, it seems Awesome, but Impractical because not only does it require saving an evolve point, but both Maisha and the spell combined cost 10 play points, and unlike Anne's Sorcery she can be stalled by Ward followers. In practice, however, Maisha is a viable win condition, since most Portalcraft decks revolve around controlling the board using tons of disposable Artifacts and Puppets, making it easy to both fuel up Maisha and conserve the necessary evolve point.
  • While all Portalcraft decks can run Maisha, the one that uses her to greatest effect (and is currently one of the most popular decks at the time of writing) is the Lishenna/Destruction deck, a deck that revolves around Lishenna from Omen of the Ten and her associated "Destruction" archetype. The main goal of the deck is to play Lishenna's signature amulets, Destruction in White and Destruction in Black, which when on the field together deals 10 damage to all enemies every turn. Both amulets have a base cost of 10 but they go down as followers are destroyed. Previously, the deck wasn't widely used because it was overly reliant on these amulets with no backup win condition. With Maisha, now the deck has two potential win conditions the opponent needs to watch out for that weren't mutually exclusive.
  • She's even better in Artifact Portal, because the combination of Deus Ex Machina and Acceleratium allows the player to regain play points per 1-cost Artifact. If done properly, the player can quickly regain the three play points used for Maisha and immediately play Purgation's Blade, delivering lethal as early as turn 7.
• Havencraft was given Elysian Saint-Hares, a 1pp 1/2 legendary follower that is considered to be one of the best 1pp followers printed. At the end of your turn, it puts a copy of itself into the deck, and when enhanced for 4pp it also pulls out 2 more 1pp followers, which are likely more copies of the Hares and basically giving their owner infinite resources. On top of that, on evolving the Hares, the player gains a leader effect that slowly boosts each 1pp follower they control, meaning every 1pp can snowball out of control if they are left alive. Commonly, on turn 4, the Hare is enhanced and evolved at the same time, forcing the opponent to not just contend with a 4-attack follower but also clean up a pair of 2/2 followers left behind. Much like Snow White, Elysian Saint-Hares gave Haven, a class that normally focuses on stalling to the lategame, a great early-game threat, and allowed for more aggressive Haven variants in Rotation.
• Dragoncraft gained Annerose, a parallel to Aiela, Dragon Sword who is destined to rotate out with the next set's release. But having the both of them in the same format gave Dragon great consistency in access to ramp, allowing Cocytus Dragon to regain popularity. Annerose herself also has great on-curve stats and could pick off stragglers if played in later stages of the game where her evolve wasn't needed. Not helping matters is that Dragon's tanky wards and early access to the Cocytus cards made them the best matchup against the equally prevalent Portal (see above).

Unlimited

• Zealot of Truth's 3/5 body with Storm made him fit beautifully into Daria and made him very difficult to answer efficiently especially when boosted by Enchanted Sword. With this one inclusion, Daria gained a new asset to pressure face or trade up, and this made the deck very prevalent in the Unlimited Grand Prix.
• From the mini-expansion, Sword gained Dionne, Dancing Blade. While on paper she is a clunky imitation of Albert, she has a devastating combo with Unsheathed Blade, which lets the player put her out as early as turn 5. As it's also the turn where the player starts getting access to evolves, this combo can deal 10 damage in one go against an undefended player. While the combo isn't very consistent, it's a very nasty thing to get caught off-guard by.

Take Two

• Lovely-Heart Monika has a great split of stats between her and her familiar, on top of a good evolve effect that creates a tempo swing. That's fine on its own, but her familiar's Last Words effect only puts it back in the player's hand. While it's got a steep cost of 7, playing this re-summons Monika and replaces an evolve point, allowing the player to easily take the board back indefinitely. As transformation and banish effects are rather difficult to encounter in Take Two, Monika is incredibly difficult to deal with permanently.

Steel Rebellion

Rotation, March 2019 to late May 2019

The introduction of the new Machina trait encourages board flooding strategies with Machina tokens. Of this expansion, several classes has benefited the most of this strategy.

• Midrange Swordcraft incorporated a lot of strong, powerful Machina options. The archetype has great synergy with Latham's effect, so the 1-cost Assembly Droids can either push for face damage to contest the board in the lategame. A typical Machina Sword deck makes and kills so many tokens that Blazing Lion Admiral saw play again despite his nerfs in the previous expansion. This leaves midrange Swordcraft as one of the most uncontested decks in the Steel Rebellion expansion.
  
  While Swordcraft lost Frontline Cavalier (perhaps the most important follower from Chronogenesis), Stampeding Fortress more than made up for its loss. On its own, it's a reasonable 4pp 4/3 Machina follower. When evolved while its player has 2 or more Machina cards in hand, it generates 3 Assembly Droids. This lets it shine in the midgame as the large number of follower deaths can build towars Johann's discounts or Blazing Lion Admiral's Invocation effect. Its Enhance 9 effect is no slouch either, giving it a sizeable stat boost and the ability to evolve for free, letting it function in the lategame.
• Past the first few weeks of the expansion's release, many decks began to pick up formerly-overlooked cards and synergies to combat wave after wave of tokens. The standard midrange Swordcraft proved to be effective against the numerous token-focused decks without even needing to use any Machina cards themselves. The most notorious of Swordcraft's cards is Leod, who debuted in the previous pack. On his own, he creates a free point of damage on evolution which then lets him replenish his Ambush, allowing him to easily take out 2 enemy followers and still remain untouchable or deliver a total of 7 damage to the enemy leader over time. Steel Rebellion, however, introduced Ivory Sword Dance. Leod's retained Ambush ensures he's around on turn 5, so his controller can boost him to 5 attack with an enhanced Ivory Sword Dance and split 5 damage across the enemy board, clearing out opposing forces and letting him get a free hit while conserving an evolution point that would normally be used to take the board back. This creates a big swing in advantage that can easily tip the battle in the Sword player's favour.
  
  Leod's so strong that he became the centrepiece of Rotation's Amush Sword builds, where decks use Brave Intervention and Everlasting Castle specifically to raise their odds of having him in play to buff and set up lethal swings.
• Midrange Bloodcraft has risen into popularity with the introduction of Machina trait that, much like midrange machina Sword, puts emphasis on flooding the board with various tokens such as Serpents, Vampire Bats, and Assembly Droids. However, unlike midrange Sword, Midrange Bloodcraft can abuse the unique "free evolve" mechanic that allows Bloodcraft to use its unique evolve effects for midgame to lategame dominance with Neutral followers such as Hnikar, Warring Thunder, Jafnhar, Warring Flame, and Odin, Wargod Ascendant. In fact, the "free evolve" mechanic is so powerful that Trill, Devilish Idol, a card once considered Awesome, but Impractical, began to see some play in various Bloodcraft decks in the Steel Rebellion expansion.
  • Destructive Succubus is by far one of the best users of evolve synergies in the set. Her colossal 10pp cost goes down whenever an allied follower evolves, regardless of how it's done. Given the various unique "free evolve" tools aforementioned above, it is possible to discount her to 5pp and even clear off an entire Poseidon + Masamune board with an ease with an evolve point. Her additional effect, while only coming into play in Vengeance, can also become a lifesaver by generating two tokens with Ward to fend off attackers.
  • Unleash the Nightmare is a new 3pp gold spell that draws two followers and spawns two tokens — Assembly Droids for Machina followers, and Forest Bats for anything else. Even if it whiffs and makes two Forest Bats, you've still spent 3pp for a combination of Concentration and Summon Bloodkin. This is easily one of the most impactful cards from the set, as it sees play in all variety of Bloodcraft decks.
  • Mono, Garnet Rebel, is a 2pp 2/2 legendary Machina follower. She can't be evolved normally, requiring other effects to do so. However, if the player plays her after at least 7 Machina followers destroyed during the match, she bestows the player an Alpha Drive spell, which evolves all Machina followers, Mono included. An evolved Mono is a 6/6 with Storm and Ward, and on turn 9 it's possible to play two copies of her and evolve them both with a single Alpha Drive, delivering game-ending amounts of burst damage. If the opponent has left any other Machina followers alive, they too join the evolve fun to pile on the burst turn. It presents a Morton's Fork similar to Blazing Lion Admiral: killing the Machina tokens fuels Mono and her Alpha Drive, but leaving too many of them alive can spell trouble when the Alpha Drive drops.
  • Medusa, Evil-Eyed Serpent may be seen as a Superior Successor to Venomfang Medusa. On summon, she spawns 3 Serpents, totalling to 5/7 split across 4 bodies, but to make life difficult for the opponent, she then gives a random one Ward and another Bane. A Medusa board filled with Serpents is relatively hard for most decks to deal with, especially if she bestows a Ward and Bane on a same serpant. Her evolve effect adds to the difficulty in negotiating the board, as it creates a Medusiana to clean out the opponent's board long after evolves have been expended.
• Shadowcraft proves to be no slouch in Steel Rebellion either:
  • Ceres is back as a powerful legendary 5pp 1/4. Her improved healing and clash effects make it incredibly difficult for most aggro decks to overcome, especially in a token-filled meta. Her true value, however, is in the spell she bestows. Eternal Vow is a 6pp spell that reduces the play point cost of all Shadowcraft cards in hand by 2 — normally a heavy tempo loss, but when a large chunk of your deck is followers that cost 2pp or less, you can easily offset this drawback on top of setting up easier combos with your more expensive cards. The discount opens up plays like Corpsewyrm Fafnir on turn 7, Arcus for 5pp (leaving you spare play points to generate Ghosts on the very same turn), or a free Ferry, Spirit Maiden to deliver surprise triple-attacks. The discount makes some Awesome, but Impractical combos easier to play as well — this includes the Minthe-Tyrant combo now costing a net of 6pp rather than 10.
  • Aenea, Amethyst Rebel is a 6pp 3/3 follower that spawns her friend, Roly-Poly Mk I, and if both are already in play, she generates Fleeting Joy at the end of the player's turn. While the Fleeting Joy spell on its own only gives some degree of defense against large burst turns, its Enhance effect for 9 pp, however, is considered to be very strong as it puts 4 different Machina followers from the player's deck into play, developing a strong board from nowhere while thinning the deck akin to Arthur in previous formats. Her friend, Roly-Poly Mk I, is no slouch either, as he can only take 1 damage at a time, meaning the opponent would need to waste a lot of resources to get rid of both Aenea and Roly-Poly. In fact, her spell is so powerful that some Shadowcraft lists forsake Arcus combos and choose to specialize in Machina followers to garner maximum value. In doing so, these decks get to contest the board easier in the early to midgame (e.g. against midrange Swordcraft and aggro Forestcraft) but suffer against opponents capable wiping out their board. (e.g. against Haven decks sporting Themis's Purge)
• Ramp Dragon continues to maintain a presence thanks to the addition of Draconic Core. In exchange for losing a bit of early game tempo, it stands to gain a large surge in play point orb gain. Evolving anything with it active gives the player an additional empty play point orb on top of regaining 2 play points to compensate for the tempo loss. If curved into an evolving Annerose, this jumpstarts the player to 6 play points as early as turn 4, guaranteeing Overflow next turn. When paired with several other ramp tools at Dragoncraft's disposal, reaching 9 play points by turn 6 or so isn't very difficult.

Rotation, June 2019

• The mini-expansion introduced Slayn, Steelwrought Vampire, a 6pp 6/6 follower that gains Storm, Rush, and/or Drain based on the player's hand size and the number of Machina cards in the player's hand. He is seen as a very powerful follower for midrange Machina Blood, since the abundance of draw power makes it very easy to enable Storm and Drain to cause a massive swing in life totals to set up Mono lethals before the opponent can defeat you.

Unlimited

• OTK Roach is given Aria's Whirlwind, a 2pp boardwipe that scales with the number of other cards played that turn, which allows them to handle multiple small Wards (i.e. Death's Breath and White Paladin's evolve effect) or fend off early aggression. This lets Roach function against unfavorable matchups and secure their dominance in the format.
• Steel Rebellion introduces Augmentation Bestowal, a Suspiciously Similar Substitute to Acceleratium and Deus Ex Machina as they had recently rotated out. In Rotation, it's relatively unremarkable as the loss of several other key cards left Artifact Portal a shadow of its former self. In Unlimited, though, it can coexist with the cards it was meant to replace. The Deus Ex-Acceleratium combo is normally limited by how many Artifacts the Portal player can play in succession; the added card draw from Augmentation Bestowal alleviates or even outright removes this limiting factor, leading to explosive turns with more value than what would normally be allowed. In fact, under the right setup, it is possible to establish strong early game board tempo with Artifacts as early as as turn 4 while denying any enemy board presence. In the mid to lategame, the spell makes it significantly easier for Portalcraft to pull off a Maisha OTK on turn 7 due to the overlapping net gain in play points and numerous dead Artifacts.
• Byron is meant to work with the Machina cards to revitalize aggro Dragon in Rotation, but he's proven to be an even greater force in Unlimited with aggro Dragon's existing assets. His abilities are simple: a +1 attack bonus to any follower played after him, and an effective bonus 2/2 follower on evolution. This extra power, much like Ephemera from previous formats, is enough to give the numerous token followers the power they need to effectively pressure the opponent's health. An evolving Byron is typically a threat to be killed on sight, but when he's defended by Poseidon's Guard it's almost guaranteed that he will live to the next turn to buff another wave of threats.

Rebirth of Glory

Rotation

• Vengeance Blood received some strong support — strong enough to make it one of the strongest decks shortly after the expansion's debut.
  • An addition exploring new "added to hand" design space is Seductress Vampire, and from day 1 she has been the cause of many a player's rage. Whenever she's drawn, she grants the Bloodcraft player permanent Vengeance for the rest of the match, eliminating the internal risk of building around the mechanic and allowing their plays to become incredibly efficient. Matches against Vengeance Blood turned into a matter of "will they draw Seductress Vampire first?" and if Seductress Vampire shows up in the first few turns it's grounds for an instant concede. After leading Vengeance Blood to dominate the first GP of the format, Seductress Vampire's on-draw effect would be changed to set the player's leader defense to 10, maintaining her role as a Vengeance enabler but now she gives all the risk associated with going into Vengance.
  • Yurius, Traitorous Duke is a nasty 3pp 1/5 follower with overloaded effects built into him. Much like his bronze version, he damages the enemy leader whenever enemy followers enter play, but this time he gets an added effect of healing his controller as well. When played while the player is in Vengeance, he can evolved without using an evolve point so he can easily threaten or trade in the mid- to late-game. His evolved form: A very powerful 5/5 who restores 4 defense to himself each time he attacks and kills an enemy follower, which makes trading into him very inconvenient. And if the player manages to pull a Seductress Vampire in the first few turns, it's almost guaranteed that Yurius becomes a bigger threat since the player can evolve him for free on their evolve turns. In fact, Yurius effectively shuts down a lot of aggro and midrange decks while presenting himself an aggressive threat to the opponent.
  • Once Seductress Vampire has Vengeance enabled in the early turns, Heartsick Demon would soon follow, giving a cost reduction to two cards in hand to enable some combos or plays a turn earlier than normal. Common instances include it discounting Laura and Calamity Bringer to effectively create a Storming 7/4 on turn 6, or simply boosting along the discounts on Destructive Succubus to enable her board-swing earlier. While Seductress Vampire's nerf would re-introduce the risk of Vengeance to the archetype, Heartsick could still do nasty things during a Vengeance highroll, and so it was nerfed from a 2pp 2/2 to a 6pp 6/6.
• Elana herself returns as a 2pp follower, now with Ward, premium on-curve stats, and an Evolve ability that generates her board-buffing Elana's Prayer. This time, though, she weaves perfectly into Haven's Machina mechanics, with plenty of board-flooding tools and numerous cards that generate Repair Mode to trigger Prayer over and over again. While all this is happening, the Elana player would also drop in several Tender Rabbit Healers to heal and buff at the same time, and add in Kel, Holy Marksman to annihilate enemy boards. All this led to Elana being the second most played deck in Rotation, and soon she was nerfed to a 4pp 3/4 to reduce the ability to fill a board to buff during the evolve turn. This nerf would be reverted after she went into Unlimited.
• Kel, Holy Marksman draws as much flak, if not more, than Elana herself due to being incredibly overtuned. When he's evolved, the combination of all his abilities pretty much means he deals 2 damage to the enemy board and restores 2 defense to the leader, all while gaining the standard +2/+2 bonus during evolution. On top of that, it all synergizes perfectly with an Elana's Prayer to give him yet another stat boost. And this is before additional healing procs are taken into account. An evolving Kel on turn 5 with a stray healing effect pretty much annihilates the enemy board and compensates for the loss of tempo in setting up Elana's Prayer.
  
  Even in a vacuum, Kel proves to be strong enough to work outside the Elana deck. In subsequent formats, Kel would see use in Natura Storm Haven solely as a way to stabilize against early aggressive boards, or in other builds of control Haven to conveniently obliterate wide boards. His abilities are just that good.
• The Machina package has given significant amount of support in this expansion. The introduction of Hoverboard Mercenary serves a Simple, yet Awesome card draw tool that benefits Machina decks that require the player to keep a good supply of Machina cards in hand (i.e. Machina Blood and Machina Sword). But more specifically, Machina Sword and Machina Blood have new and powerful tools to make their Machina decks more consistent.
  • Machina Blood has two new cards that make their gameplan with Slayn and Mono more consistent:
    • Gearsnake Tamer is a 2pp follower that turns any Serpent into a Machina follower. While looking like clumsy Serpent support clearly designed to synergize with Medusa, Gearsnake Tamer is very self-sufficient, as she summons two additional Serpents when she evolves, effectively putting out three Machina followers ready to die for Mono's condition.
    • Mechaforge Devil is a 4pp 3/3 follower who puts an Assembly Droid into the player's hand. When he evolves, he also gives a Repair Mode and refunds 2 play points. The card is easily considered Simple, yet Awesome for Machina Blood mainly because putting extra Machina tokens makes it significantly easier to activate Slayn's Storm and Drain effects, and his play point refund allows the player to maintain tempo.
  • Machina Sword is given Autoblade Patroller, a 3pp 2/2 follower who gains +2/+2 when played while the player has 2 or more Machina cards in hand. Given that Machina Sword is built to set this up, she's effectively a powerful 3pp 4/4 almost all the time. If evolved while an allied Machina follower is in play, she gets to destroy any enemy follower. It's not hard to see how overtuned she is, and it's not unusual to have players compare her to two Wonderland cards combined — the mighty stats of Cinderella without the downside, on top of Maisy's destruction effect.
  • In the previous expansion's format, Machina Rune had an interesting combo focus, with its multitude of cheap token spells that tied into its long-running Spellboost focus. However, the combos frequently demanded playing 4 or more Machina cards to get good mileage, and they were often restricted to the much later turns to be viable. The one card introduced in Rebirth that enabled the whole strategy is Mechabook Sorcerer, who refunds 1pp for each Machina card played, effectively turning all the spells free and facilitating Machina Rune's combos like no other. It's not unusual to see Magitech Golem annihilate an entire board alongside Mechanized Lifeform drawing through the whole deck.

Unlimited

• Dark Dragoon Forte has maintained recognition in Dragoncraft through the ages, generally because of her status as being one of its best legendary followers since the start of the game. When Ramp Dragon floundered in its early days, players compensated with aggro Dragon, using Forte as a finisher that delivers burst damage whenever the opponent drops their guard. Her status as a Glass Cannon was irrelevant when the opponent is too dead to deal with her, or when she becomes unattackable while Overflow is active. Though she went untouched long after the Classic set's rotation, aggro Dragoncraft's strength reached a peak in the Steel Rebellion format, forcing Cygames to recognize Forte's game-ending ability and limit her to 1 per deck after 26 June 2019. The limitation lasted for only one expansion though, as her limitation was eventually lifted at the start of the Verdant Conflict expansion, due to Dragoncraft's under-performance both in the Unlimited and Rotation formats.
• Recall Rhinoceroach from the Classic set? Meet Whirlwind Rhinoceroach, a variation of it that is designed for bounce Forest but now is no longer dependent on building up to a large turn of spamming cheap cards. This version of Roach needs the player to have played more than 5 copies of it before it can actually start hitting face, but at that stage the player now only needs to land 3 more copies to ensure lethal on an unguarded opponent. Because it's built around bouncing to the hand over and over again over the entire match, many a Roach player will use ways to return it to the hand as the last action of each turn, making it very difficult to deal with Roach aside from throwing up Wards and hoping for the best. The plethora of bounce effects in Unlimited makes Whirlwind Roach frighteningly consistent to the point that the few decks that have a good matchup against it are Rotation's former menaces: Elana Haven (with its plentiful heals and Wards) and Vengance Blood (with Azazel's Damage Reduction effect).
• Vengeance Blood in the Unlimited format is much nastier when compared to Rotation as the new cards from Rebirth of Glory were assimilated into the existing core from past sets. Like with Rotation, the use of Seductress Vampire erased the innate risk of enabling Vengeance, making their on-curve plays especially deadly and allowing for extremely aggressive Vengeance builds.^note Most Storm-enabling effects only trigger while in Vengeance, so Seductress Vampire's effect lets them activate much earlier than before. After the Seductress Vampire nerf, though, the deck still lives on due to having enough enablers from past expansions to reliably trigger Vengeance. In particular, the new Azazel has shown to be the most important addition as he both enables Vengeance and implements a Damage Reduction effect to protect against the deck's Achilles' Heel of burst damage combos which run rampant in Unlimited. Dark Airjammer also experienced a resurgence in play rates with the inclusion of strong 2pp Blood followers over the past few sets.
• Elana Haven in Unlimited became much more consistent due to Elana herself serving as the fourth to sixth copies of Elana's Prayer. Access to the original amulet also means the deck is a lot less evolve dependent than its Rotation counterpart, and it's not unusual to see two or more Prayers on board at the same time. While the deck normally plays like a Mighty Glacier that is easily slowed by Damage Reduction effects like those from Azazel, it can also combo the original Kel with a hefty stock of Repair Modes to deal a game-ending burst of damage to the enemy leader. And since this deck was one of the few that has a favorable matchup against Whirlwind Rhinoceroach, it became a common sight during the Unlimited Grand Prix in late July 2019.
• Thought the Daria deck didn't have enough out-of-hand burst? Meet Twinblade Mage, the retrained version of Blade Mage. In exchange for a raised cost, Twinblade's Fanfare makes him great for extinguishing small Wards. With a total of nine Storm units at its fingertips, the deck switched its focus from a midrange-like board dominance to sudden low-cost burst damage.

Verdant Conflict

Verdant Conflict was a highly disliked expansion, nearly on par with Wonderland Dreams. While the Natura mechanic was seen as an interesting addition, it added too much consistency to many decks, and the abundance of Storm/burn damage introduced with this expansion created many "uninteractive" decks where the only real way to play against them was essentially to win first.

Rotation

• Whirlwind Roach's influence now extends into Rotation. The reason? Airbound Barrage got reprinted. Now with a total of nine cheap effective bounce effects to use, Whirlwind Roach can easily reach its Storm threshold by turn 7. Due to the Rotation format's lack of strong aggressive cards and Whirlwind's Roach strong defensive tools to deal with aggro and midrange decks, this makes Whirlwind Roach one of the most uncontested decks in the Rotation with little to no counterplay.
• With the revelation that many high value cards from Brigade of the Sky would rotate out, people were quick to claim that Shadowcraft would be dead for the upcoming format. Those people were proven wrong with Shadowcraft's Natura package. The key player here is Thoth. If her owner had 10 or more cards with Last Words destroyed by the time she's played, she gives all subsequent cards the ability to deal 2 damage to the opponent when they get destroyed. Note that this reads cards and not just followers, so just playing and cycling through Naterran Great Trees can easily build towards Thoth's condition and serve as a finisher afterwards. The Natura Shadow deck has many means to create tokens with Last Words through cards like Revenant Ram, Lubelle and Cerberus, and a good opening hand can easily pressure the opponent into submission. Though it is weak to Havencraft's banish effects, the deck's ability to proactively destroy their own cards can overcome an unfavorable matchup through sheer numbers.
• Haven maintains its stance as a formidable faction on the ladder, as the infamous Elana Haven lost very little in the rotation. As if to replicate what happened in the Darkness Evolved meta, an aggressive Haven deck joined the ranks. Natura Haven plays much more aggressively than its Elana counterpart, with no less than four cards with Storm capability. The last of these, Agnes, is one of the biggest offenders, as she uses a much-reviled cost reduction mechanic to make herself almost free over the course of the game before finishing off the opponent with surprise burst damage.
  
  What also made Agnes very deadly was her statline. Being able to play up to three free 4/5 Storm followers meant a lot of potential burst damage. This statline was also optimal for a combo with Craving's Splendor, which meant a single Agnes can deal 8 damage at once, securing lethal without needing too many of her at once. Towards the end of November 2019, Agnes was nerfed to a 3/4 follower, forcing the player to stock up a little more chip damage from the preceding turns, and also making her incompatible with Craving's Splendor unless she has been evolved.
• While it had a brief bout of popularity at the format's debut, Natura Dragon was drowned out by fast decks like Natura Haven, before reclaiming its place in the meta following Natura Haven's nerf. Spearheaded by Valdain, the deck runs as much of the Natura package as it can afford to build up destroyed Trees for his signature spell Shadow's Corrosion and put the opponent on a clock with increasing amounts of inevitable damage. Normally Shadow's Corrosion damage alone is not enough, so that's when a well-timed Shiva or Genesis Dragon of Disaster comes in to provide extra burst to defeat a weakened opponent. The rest of Dragon's own Natura package is very good at generating and destroying extra Trees to help cycle through the deck for its combo pieces. Combined with various healing effects to keep themselves in the game especially in the Mirror Match, and you have a deck primed to defeat anything slow-paced.

Rotation, November 2019

• After fading into obscurity following the launch of Omen of the Ten, Aggro Forest gained two new tools to reclaim its infamy: Amataz, Fairy Blader and Divine Smithing. Amataz was first introduced as part of the Verdant Conflict set proper, but was a little inconsistent as he focused specifically on Fairies. He still pulled his weight in Unlimited, though, with the plethora of Fairy generators available. Divine Smithing came with the mini-expansion, and did enough to make Aggro Forest consistent in securing turn 6 kills. This humble 1-cost spell gives +1 attack and Rush to all 1-cost followers in the player's hand, so it stacked perfectly with Amataz for a collection of buffed fairies. At its Enhance cost of 4, it gives Storm instead of Rush so that the player has a backup plan should they not have Amataz. Better yet, since it didn't just boost Fairies, it had interesting applications with stray copies of May, Water Fairy and even the infamous Whirlwind Rhinoceroach. The deck is fast enough to outpace the otherwise dreaded Natura Dragon, and even Roach decks struggle in dealing with this deck's aggression. Little needs to be said about how strong the deck has become in Unlimited.

Unlimited

• The new cards in this expansion have also left their impact on Unlimited, with the biggest impact left on Holy Mage Haven, a deck that was popular a year ago which cycled amulets to buff up Holy Mage. The new additions to the deck were Snnneak Attack! and Agnes. The former generates a stubborn Storm follower who could pressure the opponent with guaranteed face damage at minimum, and the latter discounts herself with each destroyed amulet. The deck doesn't need to use Naterran Great Trees at all; two copies of City of Gold in play forces most of its Countdown amulets to expire immediately, generating its Storm units and discounting Agnes on demand. Between its new Storm followers and numerous random-hitting removal to clear even the most stubborn Wards, the deck can easily deliver lethal damage by turn 7. It even eschews its former namesake Holy Mage to make space for the new additions.
  
  Before City of Gold, Holy Mage was impractical due to the demand to play lots of amulets, a lack of board space due to rapid clogging from playing these amulets, and the lack of draw power to continue to play amulets. Now, a City of Gold or two will cause these low-countdown amulets to proc immediately, giving their beneficial effects without sacrificing board space; it also helped that Haven received a few draw power amulets like Moriae Encomium, Globe of the Starways, and Sealed Tome to cycle through the deck quickly. Other amulets like Divine Birdsong and Pinion Prayer assist by generating powerful Storm followers to help push for lethal damage with Holy Mage. Haven decks that run both Holy Mage and City of Gold are often compared to Vagabond Frog as both decks are focused on buffing a single Ambushed follower to high heavens, beyond the reach of most area-of-effect damage. Sometimes, the best deck to deal with Holy Mage Haven was another Holy Mage Haven deck as their randomly hitting removal could deal with an Ambushed Holy Mage regardless of her size.
  
  After the dominance of Natura Haven in both Rotation and Unlimited, it was decided that City of Gold was the problem child. It was cheap to play and even easier to invoke, as its sole invocation condition was to end a turn with at least 2 unspent play points without a copy already in play. It turned low-Countdown amulets into de facto spells that gave their full payout immediately or much sooner than normal. Cards like Priest of Excess and Heretical Inquiry turned into efficient removal that snuck past Ambush and targeting protection, and Pinion Prayer and Divine Birdsong gave Storm units much sooner. City of Gold was thus nerfed to have a base cost of 3pp, and its invocation condition raised to require 4 unspent play points.
• Chaos Wielder is intended to be a weaker replacement for Fate's Hand in Rotation. In Unlimited, though, he serves as the Daria deck's 4th to 6th copies of the card. Unlike Daria, Chaos Wielder is less Spellboost hungry, and even can be evolved to boost your current hand in a pinch. The added consistency, draw power, and reduction in chance of bricking means that the Daria deck can afford to eschew the namesake Daria while still delivering the same amount of cost-reduced burst.
• With the restriction of Dark Dragoon Forte lifted, Face Dragon has made a strong comeback in the Unlimited format. The biggest card introduced for Face Dragon is Neptune, Tidemistress. While her use in the Rotation format serves as replacement to the now rotated out Poseidon in regards to the Masamune combo, her use in Face Dragon comes from her Accelerate effect, which essentially a 3pp 2/2 follower with Storm akin to Swordcraft's Novice Trooper and Bloodcraft's Savage Wolf. She also serves as a good lategame topdeck, as she spawns 2 Megalorca and bestow them Storm to help push lethal damage as well as being a very stubborn Ward herself to protect the board. Combined with a few new followers from Rebirth of Glory, this allows Face Dragon to rival aggro Sword in terms of early game Storm damage. Some players opt to have her replace Phoenix Rider Aina due to the sheer versatility and practicality of the card.
• Arcane Item Shop requires very specific deck building, as it forces the player to run no followers in their deck at all to make full use of it. It can be invoked on turn 10 at the cost of an unspent evolve point, but a deck without followers may find it difficult to even survive that long. While it is a mostly harmless and gimmicky deck in Rotation, it's much more potent in Unlimited due to the abundance of cards that can be reduced to 0 cost, or which can refund the play points spent on them, effectively returning play points to the player. The deck is still extremely vulnerable to early aggression, but once it reaches turn 7 with Arcane Item Shop and a 0-cost card in hand, it can play a long string of cards, raining down enough damage to annihilate the opponent's board and bring them down from full health in a single turn. If your opponent is playing Runecraft and isn't running Daria, this is the next most likely candidate.
• Mugnier, Purifying Light is essentially Portalcraft's ultimate swiss-army knife. Decent stats as a 2pp 2/2, and erases all abilities from everyone as a Fanfare. She basically corrects Portal's weakness to Ambush and damaging Clash effects, removes Ward to expose weakened opponents, and mops up troublesome Last Words effects. On top of that, if you evolve her she banishes an enemy amulet, which makes her great for taking down win conditions or defenses. People paid her no mind at first since she was a nice support to Portal's under-performance in Rotation, but in Unlimited Artifact Portal, with its plethora of play point regeneration and draw power, she ensures that no player is safe — not even the Mirror Match where she can answer an enemy Acceleratium or Path to Purgatory.

Arena

• Arcane Item Shop also went on to cause more problems in the Gems of Fortune Cup. Because both players' decks were filled with 0pp Gem spells, this meant that Item Shop's condition was automatically fulfilled by default, and the player who got Item Shop on curve can easily expend the rest of their Gems for free play points and damage. If the prospect of easy spellboost synergy and great draw power didn't make Runecraft appealing enough in this game mode, the probability of just winning outright with Item Shop certainly did.

Ultimate Colosseum

Rotation

• One of the most prevalent decks shortly after the set's release was Ginsetsu Shadow, named after Ginsetsu, Great Fox. The deck is built around followers with a base attack or defense of 1, and draws its strength from Shuten-Doji's ability to grant them Storm. Giving Storm to 1-attack followers doesn't seem so bad until you realize that the Storm is given before Fanfare boosts are applied, so an Enhanced Yuki-Onna will be a 6/5 Storm unit that's likely punctured your Ward and left you undefended. As for Ginsetsu herself, she not only has an optimal statline to receive Shuten-Doji's boost, but is a board flood in herself that rivals Eachtar. If not Accelerated, she summons four 1/3 tokens with Ward and Rush, and not only does Ginsetsu strengthen them with 1 more attack and Drain, but the Foxes dying will proceed to buff her. Ginsetsu backed by Shuten-Doji effectively lets her controller heal for at least 6 and attack the opponent for at least 7 damage all in one fell swoop.
• Following Ginsetsu Shadow in prevalence is the new iteration of Spellboost Runecraft. The archetype is designed around a series of followers that summon Shikigami tokens which Spellboost the entire hand on death. Demoncaller gives them Rush to be more proactive with boosts, and Traditional Sorcerer gives them Ward so the opponent will inevitably be forced to beat through them and trigger their Spellboosts. The key card Kuon fills the board with three different Shikigami, and gives the common two variants Storm to pressure the opponent, and if the opponent wants to clear out the board, the Divine Shikigami unique to Kuon provides three Spellboosts on death, meaning a full clear on Kuon's board has given five free boosts and the next Kuon is inevitable. No wonder the deck gets comparisons to Daria.
• Karyl, Catty Sorceress is one of the new additions propping up Natura Rune, despite not being explicitly designed for the strategy. What she does is that, before anything else, she reduces the opponent's maximum health by 5, and this can be stacked. This essentially means that, even when a deck holding her has not been making any headway in damage, three copies of Karyl will win the game entirely on her own.^note And if the opponent is playing Vengeance Blood, they can be killed in as few as one. Her Union Burst ability deals 1 damage to the enemy leader and a random enemy follower a total of five times each, meaning that the third Karyl activating her Union Burst is guaranteed to kill. She's not too bad on curve either, as her evolve effect wipes out all enemy followers with 3 defense or less. Her role in Natura Rune essentially works to deliver a one-turn-kill with Riley, as her Union Burst and evolve effect can easily clear the board of any Wards that could stand in the way of Riley on top of bringing the enemy health within lethal range. While Yokai Shadow and Shikigami Rune are about equally hated, Karyl stands out as a hated single card as opposed to archetypes.
  • The mini-expansion brought Princess Knight into the game, paving the way for a deck built exclusively around drawing Karyl and enabling her Union Burst as soon as possible. If all went well, the deck would play three Karyls back-to-back and secure a nigh-unstoppable win on turn 8. While the design is a little fragile as it is largely dependent on most of its best-case scenarios, the deck was not fun at all to play against — it's bound to be a Curb-Stomp Battle for either player.

Unlimited

• Dimension Shift is back, and it's faster and stronger than before. Traditionally, Dimension Shift decks often lose to aggro decks because aggro decks can out tempo Dimension Shift before D-Shift can initiate their combo around turn 7 (in addition, Dimension Shift often lacks early game Wards to fend off aggro decks). However, the tables have turned with the introduction of the Shikigami package, with cards such as Traditional Sorcerer to bestow them Wards and Demoncaller to bestow them Rush, this allows D-Shift to easily contest the early game board against aggro decks and fend off early aggression. Combined with various new early game tempo and spells from previous expansions, this makes the traditional Dimension Shift matchup from a favorable matchup to a massively unfavorable matchup for aggro decks. And even if the Dimension Shift deck fails to pull the Dimension Shift in the first few turns, the deck can resort to a more midrange "plan B" gameplan with Kuon if necessary by utilizing Storm damage (and should the player have both Dimension Shift AND Kuon at the same time in their starting hand, it's a guarantee game over for the opponent), meaning not even Godsworn Alexiel is enough to protect the player from incremental Storm damage. With the introduction of the Shikigami package, Dimension Shift is able to destroy aggro, midrange, and control decks with virtually little to no counterplay.

Take Two

• Portal's featured archetype involved the "float" strategy, where some of their cards provide perks if you end the turn with unspent play points. This proved to be incredibly powerful in Take Two, where removal and fast finishers were lacking and the strategy was more board-dependent. Gravity Grappler was a very strong contender as he could easily provide a lot of card advantage from the midgame onwards — and bear in mind that he's very hard to answer from behind a Ward in this game mode. Boost Kicker is similarly powerful due to being a very effective boardwipe on turns after both players have expended their evolve points. Both cards are also low-rarity, making them very easy to encounter and draft in multiples. Grappler was removed from the draft pool after Portal dominated many games, and Boost Kicker was soon to follow.

World Uprooted

Rotation, March - May 2020

• Natur Al'Machinus can essentially be described as "Daria on steroids"; while you do have to make a significant Fusion investment to get the most of it (on top of using Natura and Machina cards yourself), the only other Natura card you'll ever see in a Machina deck is Changewing Cherub (which is also a Machina card anyway). Alchemical Confectioner also sees use to make drawing Al'Machinus and Changewing an inevitability. Once you've played Al'Machinus, it deals damage for each card you've fused into it (taking out a large enemy follower), draws you a new hand, and if you've fused at least one each of Natura and Machina cards (remember, Changewing's also a hybrid, so you only need her or a stray copy of Al'Machinus to enable this condition) the new hand is also all discounted by 3. The Al'Machinus and Changewing package first proved their worth by allowing Machina Forest to dominate the Rotation scene until the nerfs (see below); following that, every other rising Machina deck (and even some Natura ones) included the package in one way or another due to the value its discounts gave on following turns.
• Changewing Cherub herself is not spared from criticism. She already comes with decent 1/3 stats for a 2-drop, and her Fanfare does many nice things — but most significantly, it deals 2 damage to an enemy follower if you have 3 or more Machina cards in hand. By this point every Machina deck has enough playable cards so that this condition is easily fulfilled all the time, and this turns Changewing Cherub into an incredible early-game tempo swing. It gets even more egregious when Machina Forest uses a bounce spell to recycle her so that you know keeping down followers in the early turn becomes futile; other decks will use Wayfaring Illustrator for a similar purpose.
• Machina Forest was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap with a lot of potent new tools to keep a healthy hand supply and facilitate its multiple-cards-in-a-turn playstyle... and such an effort had Gone Horribly Right. The biggest boogeymen of the early World Uprooted Rotation meta were Damian and Natur Al'Machinus. Machina Forest was so dominant and oppressive that they prompted nerfs on day 2 of the expansion, the fastest emergency nerfs in the game's history.
  • Damian would have been slightly tolerable because his high cost makes it inconvenient to fill a board and play him at the same time. If he's played after a Machina card, he gains the dreaded Storm keyword, and just by attacking he deals damage to the board and the enemy leader before proper combat damage, so he'll probably deal 6 damage total to face at minimum, and a little more if you manage to build and keep a bigger board. But with the 3-cost discount from Al-Machinus, a lot of your cards, Damian included, become incredibly cheap or outright free, so you can start with absolutely nothing after an Al'Machinus turn and, from your large discounted hand, play five Machina cards, including two Damians. Each Damian will deal 5 damage to the opposing board and 9 total to the enemy leader, so that's an easy 18 damage on turn 8 that will end games faster than Kuon could, and even if it's not lethal, the opposing board has been rendered barren! Damian would get his cost increased from 6 to 7 to reduce the ease of playing him back-to-back with a large board, and even allow the opponent some breathing space to field more threats for the opponent to answer.
  • An unspoken factor in the shenanigans is Ironglider Elf. On Fanfare and Evolve, he draws a Machina card from your deck and reduces its cost by 1. This not only fuels the hand for Al'Machinus, but if it actually draws and discounts Al'Machinus, the hulking hybrid can show up on turn 6, followed by the massive burst combo on turn 7. In the worst case scenario where you don't draw it, you can still chain a few other cheap Machina cards into Damian to still pressure the opponent and clear their board without expending evolves. The nerf removed Ironglider's discounts on both his Fanfare and Evolve effect to prevent this interaction.
• Nerea, Beast Empress is notorious for being a very overloaded card. On her own she summons a Flood Behemoth and gives it Ward, essentially being two 6-cost bodies for the price of one. Flood Behemoth's own Clash effect damages the enemy board which makes trading into it tedious. Nerea herself automatically evolves if the Blood player has drawn two or more cards that turn (a very simple feat given the draw power Blood has at its disposal) and when she attacks while evolved she gives the enemy board -2/-2, instantly decimating most wide boards and weakening her attack target so she's almost guaranteed to survive a trade. If you didn't satisfy her Avarice condition on curve, you can just manually evolve her anyway. Her sheer power and lack of strict conditions means she goes almost anywhere, and it's really hard to face a Blood deck without expecting to run into her at some point in the game.

Rotation, Late May - June 2020

• Ravening Corruption is the new addition to Bloodcraft, intended to support Natura and provide a win condition for the large amount of draw power the archetype has. After evolving, its controller gets a leader effect that damages a random enemy (follower or leader) for each card drawn, effectively becoming Blood's own Shipsbane Plesiosaurus (see below). Its most lethal application in Rotation is in conjunction with the aforementioned Natur Al'Machinus, as NAM with a good Fusion investment will destroy a large follower, sweep up any other stragglers, and turn the remaining damage into face damage for good measure, leaving the opponent with nothing to defend themselves and a lower life total. And this is before you factor in the rest of the discounted cards that NAM just drew. Unlimited's not spared from Ravening Corruption either, as there are decks focused on spamming as much Card Cycling effects as possible to squeeze out game-ending damage in a turn shortly after evolving Corruption.

Unlimited

• Shipsbane Plesiosaurus breathes life into Discard Dragon with a leader effect that deals 2 damage to a random enemy follower and the enemy leader whenever its user discards a card. This was intended to open up a new playstyle for Natura focused on discarding from its usually large hand for extra perks and damage, but it instead took Unlimited by storm through synergizing with all of the discard effects from the older sets. Once Plesiosaurus was in place the Discard deck would run through as many cycling effects it could muster and grind the opponent's board and health into the ground; Golden Dragon's Den saw a surge in playability as the deck's source of endgame damage. The nerfs on day 2 of World Uprooted reduced the leader damage to 1, halving the rate at which the deck won through discards alone and enforcing the need for additional damage sources to secure lethal.
• Special mention must be made for Temple Haven. While the deck did get a lot of consistency with Saintly Griffon's ability to pull the focal amulet straight into play, it got a lot faster with three cards from this expansion: Major Prayers. Graywing Featherfolk, and Justine. Major Prayers lets the deck summon a Meowskers without needing to wait out the Countdown from his corresponding amulet, giving access to three more copies of up to 4 on-demand Storm damage. Graywing spells an easy 4 Storm damage, and can also be Crystallized in the early game to set up for midgame burst. Justine, on the other hand, stands out as a powerful finisher like Albert of days past due to her innate Storm. Her 5pp cost means she combos perfectly with Aether, so two Justines back-to-back like this spell a quick 11 damage with Summit Temple, which can end games very quickly. With its durable followers making it hard to keep the board clear, the deck went on to be a big defining factor the Unlimited meta of this era, exaggerating the Rocket-Tag Gameplay factor even more.
• Another contributor to Rocket-Tag Gameplay is Tyrant OTK Shadow. The game plan is as follows: Use all sorts of Shadow's draw power effects to dig through the deck and accumulate shadows, play Minthe on turn 4 and keep her 20 free shadows with Sonata of Silence, then reach at least 30 shadows by turn 6 so that you invoke Gremory, Death Teller and get her leader effect. This effect refunds shadows and play points based on how much you used for your first Necromancy effect, so Deathly Tyrant at that point is a completely free 13/13 Storm unit. You can play two of them back-to-back in a single turn to kill an undefended opponent on the spot. Path to Purgatory is also easily enabled and works as a repeatable board clear for longer games. The best bet of beating it, aside from hoping the deck draws poorly, is to rush it down with an aggressive deck as it is too busy drawing through the deck to build up board presence for the first four turns, which perpetuates the Vicious Cycle that causes the format to favor fast decks.

Fortune's Hand

Rotation, July - Late Aug 2020

• One of the mechanics introduced in this set is "Rally", which checks if the player has had a certain number of followers (designated on the card) come into play before the effect triggers. So clearly the craft best designed for it is Swordcraft and their token-based Zerg Rush strategies. The deck was very easy to pilot as you just kept pumping out tokens to pressure the opponent, and by the time they couldn't keep up, Fieran would invoke herself and provide a big buff to the wide board. Rally Sword became one of the most-played decks in the early days of the format, preying on slower decks trying to find their niche in the fresh environment.
  • One of the biggest contributors was Regal Wildcat, which could be Accelerated at 4pp to summon a 2/2, 1/2, and 1/1, thereby providing an easy three counts towards any Rally checks. To curb the dominance of Rally Sword, as of 5th July 2020, this Accelerate effect would be completely removed, forcing Wildcat to only be a finisher.
  • That's not to say some of the Rally cards themselves weren't ignored. Honorable Thief is another fantastic addition, as he has fair 2/2 stats for his cost, provided a token spell to give Rush, and evolved for free after the player has satisfied the simple Rally 7 condition. This lets him easily contest boards and contribute to many evolve synergies in Rotation. As of 5th July, he would be reduced to a 2/1 to reduce his trading capability.
• For this expansion, Earth Rite Rune received a hefty amount of support to the point where it became one of the best contenders in the Rotation format. Naturally, several key cards get hated.
  • Vergewalker Magician, when evolving, consumes a Sigil to deal 2 damage to all enemy followers; if possible, he can consume a second Sigil to deal 4 instead. While this evolve effect is undoubtedly very powerful, Vergewalker's high Sigil consumption held back his playability when he debuted in the previous set. Fast forward to Fortune's Hand where Rune was granted enough Sigil generators that seeing an Earth Rite player with 2 or more Sigils active is now incredibly common. This let Vergewalker reach his full potential, and he's the key card in extinguishing the board spam exercised by many Rally-based decks like Rally Sword and Burial Rite Shadow.
  • The most common finisher for Earth Rite Rune isn't Forbidden Darkmage as you would think, but the infamous Karyl, Catty Sorceress. The culprit for this change is Lhynkal, the Fool. On summon she gave the player a choice between two token spells, and of course Scourge of the Omniscient gets picked without fail. Once used, it imposes a gradual Maximum HP Reduction on the enemy leader, and multiple instances of this spell can stack. Lhynkal lets the Earth Rite deck play very defensively, dragging out the game to let Scourge of the Omniscient lower the enemy's max defense until Karyl's Union Burst can finish the job. Darkmage himself sometimes still serves as the finisher, but Karyl costs less and demands less setup.
• Shadow's theme in this set is the Burial Rite mechanic, and like with Earth Rite, it received a lot of great support, leading to the mechanic getting Rescued from the Scrappy Heap and becoming one of the best contenders in the format. It's hard to pin down a few cards that would lead to this change, but overall the deck was greatly improved in consistency, with many great Burial Rite cards letting their user draw cards to offset the lost hand advantage, effectively functioning like Card Cycling with extra steps. Milteo, the Lovers is well known for greatly facilitating this; a lot of matches can be made or broken based on the enemy's ability to deal with the draw-2 Last Words. Because Burial Rite counted towards Rally, they can easily invoke Fieran to provide a threat worth answering over their wide board, and because so many followers would be intentionally destroyed, the deck can get enough Shadows to invoke Aisha with little effort. Conquering Dreadlord would also join the invocation train as he gives the player a free Lich and a free card in hand after enough Burial Rites are performed, and is supremely sticky when reanimated by Fatal Order or He Who Once Rocked. All this combines into a deck that can easily flood the board with big followers and essentially demand a boardwipe to answer.
  • Cloistered Sacristan can be Crystallized for cheap, and brought out as quickly as turn 4 if you hit a Burial Rite for each turn after you Crystallize him. His Evolve effect was fantastic, too — at the cost of a Burial Rite (which you're going to do anyway) you get to destroy the strongest enemy follower and heal 3 while still getting the full +2/+2 stat bonus on a fat Ward follower, so he easily goes 3-for-1. Sacristan essentially becomes vital to protecting Milteo-built boards, especially if Fieran's hidden behind him for an extra turn of survival and snowballing buffs. From August 20, 2020, Sacristan would eat a big nerf, and he now only heals without destroying.
• Terrorformer became the central piece to a strong Forest deck in this format. Its awkward-looking fusion conditions are compensated with consistent card draw, allowing the player to more-or-less break even in card advantage if they fuse 2 cards each turn. Terrorformer would become an Increasingly Lethal Enemy that stays safe in the hand, slowly growing to sizes that can deliver an instant kill by turn 6 or 7. Not helping matters is that it easily gains Storm by the first time you've fused into it, and with the second fuse you get to destroy an enemy Ward in the way of your lethal. The true way to avoid death by this giant bug is to either throw up untargetable Wards (or a lot of them) or to defend with Damage Reduction. As of August 20, 2020, Terrorformer's destruction effect could no longer destroy Ward followers, allowing players more routes of counterplay.
• Zelgenea is one of the set's face neutral legendary cards, infamous for bringing any aggro strategy to a grinding halt. On Fanfare he heals 5, quickly undoing any early-game damage. But that's not all — if he was played while you were at 14 defense or less, he destroys the strongest enemy follower and draws you two cards, creating a shift in advantage to let you recover easily. He can't be evolved manually, but being a 5pp 5/5 on top of the above is usually more than enough for an on-curve play. If you've held out to turn 10, he invokes himself and auto-evolves to a colossal 10/10, and attacking with him then creates a leader effect that inflicts 4 damage to everyone each turn. This second part of Zelgenea not only allows him to serve as a win condition for control decks that outlast the opposition, but it paves the way for one-turn-kill combos involving the likes of Regal Wildcat or Awakened Ragna. It's very hard to see a deck without him.
  • Haven decks would use Zelgenea as a backup win condition, and pair him with Yukari to defend their own board (and leader) from Zelgenea's damage ability. But since Yukari's effect lasts until the opponent's next turn, Yukari serves double duty as a combo piece with Zelgenea and a counter to the opponent's Zelgenea. Zelgenea's ubiquity paired with a high-tier Haven deck can easily lead to Mirror Matches decided by how many Yukaris one can play back-to-back.
  • His ubiquity would eventually see him get nerfed to a 6pp 5/5 on 27 October 2020. His evolve stats would also be shrunk down to 7/7.

Rotation, Late Aug - Sep 2020

• Eternal Whale is a curious addition — a 6pp 5/7 Ward is pretty beefy, and the 2 damage Fanfare is good icing on the cake. But then you get to the last effect: If it leaves play, you shuffle four 1pp copies of it into your deck. Unlike normal Last Words, returning to hand or banishment won't spare you — you have to erase the effect or transform the Whale for this. And those copies have the exact same abilities, right down to shuffling in even more copies if they die. There are two ways it's used:
  • The first use is to combo this card with Slaughtering Dragonewt, building the deck such that the first Slaughtering Dragonewt destroys a majority of your deck before you shuffle your Whales in, and soon your opponent will be overrun by an unending stream of Whales that, at minimum, will slowly chip them to death with their Fanfare. The deck may be not all that strong, but it's a very irritating opponent to face if you're not prepared.
  • The second use is to just run a copy or two in a Dragon deck stuffed to the gills with card draw. Discard Dragon is a prime example, where its numerous Card Cycling effects can rapidly thin out the deck and put it at risk of decking out if it goes on for too long. But somewhere along the line it will draw into the Eternal Whale, and unless the opponent has one of few ways to get rid of it permanently, the Whale will begin refilling the deck with cheap copies of itself, removing the risk of deck out and creating an indefinite source of Wards and damage to close out the game.
• Spellboost largely faded into the background when Earth Rite received way more support this set. Then comes Runie, Resolute Diviner, and her mere presence pushed the archetype into relevance again. Runie herself Spellboosts on Fanfare, effectively functioning like a pseudo-spell at the minimum. At the low cost of 1 spellboost, you draw a card, which makes Runie break even on card advantage like the basic Magic Missile. When she's boosted 4 or more times, she deals 3 damage to a random enemy follower, letting the deck have some means of board control. At 7 or more boosts, she deals 3 damage to the enemy leader and heals you for 3, providing the deck with much-needed reach and surprise healing when things go south. Finally, at 10 or more spellboosts she puts 3 more copies of herself into your hand, ensuring you'll hardly run out of Spellboost sources. She easily plays many roles — she can be used early on if you need to spellboost and draw urgently, and is a reasonable high-boost target to complement your other payloads. Unlimited isn't spared, either, as Runie fits perfectly into Daria decks to give them the push to close the game.
• Sword got pushed down a tier after the above nerf to Regal Wildcat, but Evolve Sword took the helm after the mini-expansion introduced Alyaska, War Hawker. When evolving, he puts an Exterminus Weapon in hand and discounts it for the number of times your followers evolved that game, and he gets to evolve for free if you put an Officer into play while he's on the field. Frequently, he combos perfectly with Honorable Thief on turn 6, giving you 2 evolves for the turn and a much cheaper Exterminus Weapon. Searching for him is not that difficult, either, when you have access to King's Welcome or Gelt, Resolute Knight. He's also immune to non-combat damage so he can unexpectedly tank boardwipes or force uncomfortable trades. The Weapon counts as a Commander in hand in case you need to enable the extra effects of Lady of the Lance, and it serves as hard removal to remove threats that can't be taken out easily in combat. This gives Evolve Sword the ability to handle a lot of threats without expending the player's limited evolve points, allowing them to either crush the opponent in value, or Hold the Line until Zelgenea invokes himself and you give him Storm with Regal Wildcat for a total of 20 face damage.

Unlimited

• To bump up the underplayed Burial Rite mechanic, a lot of Shadowcraft's new cards made use of it and improved its efficiency. One such card was Coffin of the Unknown Soul, which could bury a high-cost follower for later Reanimation effects, while automatically summoning it at a later turn if no appropriate Reanimation arrived. Higher-cost buried followers are counterbalanced with a longer countdown time. Seems fine until one realizes that Lord Atomy bypasses the whole counterbalancing. With this in hand, Atomy returned to prominence, as players could use Coffin to bury a high-cost Storm follower like Zeus or He Who Once Rocked, fill the rest of the board with cheap amulets or tokens, drop Atomy and have at least two massive bodies as early as turn 3. Answering such a highroll is near-impossible unless one highrolls themselves.
• Artifact Portal has been one of the strongest contenders in prior formats, but what's pushed it above and beyond is Artifact Scan. This free silver spell puts two different Artifacts that have been destroyed so far into your hand, and if you have 6 or more different ones, they also get their costs reduced to 0. The first part of the spell is the only detail that matters, since you're mainly replenishing your 1-cost Analyzing or Ancient Artifacts. When combined with Acceleratium and/or Augmentation Bestowal detailed above, Artifact Scan is a free play extender that allows Portal to keep trucking along after they should have run out of steam. The deck has become one of the most dominant ones so far, capable of devouring any other deck that relies on maintaining a board and perpetuating the format's reliance on instant burst damage. On 27 October 2020, Artifact Scan would be nerfed to cost 1pp, reducing the amount of free advantage that Artifact Portal gets.

Storm Over Rivayle

Rotation, Oct - Late Nov 2020

• Ward Haven was an archetype previously established in Ultimate Colosseum, but it really took off with this expansion, which added several cards that compensated for its shortcomings.
  • Anvelt is the new face of the archetype. He Crystallizes for a low cost, and while he has a long Countdown, it speeds up as you have more Ward followers. It's easy to accelerate this with cheap wards like Sacred Stone Apostle and Wilbert's Accelerate. If all goes well, Anvelt can show up as early as turn 4. And he's not just a big body — when he enters play (regardless of method), he deals 4 damage to all enemy followers and 2 to the enemy leader, easily cleaning out most enemy boards while presenting a tough threat that takes more resources to bring down.
  • Enchanted Knight is a humble Bronze 2pp 1/2 Ward follower, but he has a very strong effect for his rarity. Drawing cards for each Ward in play lets the deck gain card advantage like never before. Most of the time he draws two, which is pretty strong for a 2pp play on turn 4, but when he gets three or four cards, it's a lot of card advantage to overcome. 27 October 2020 would see him nerfed to a 3pp 1/3, countering his overall card draw efficiency.
  • Sarissa was introduced in Fortune's Hand, but she fits perfectly into this new iteration of the deck. She's already difficult to kill on sight since she negates the first instance of damage she takes, but with the deck's newfound ability to raise a lot of Wards, fighting through them will result in Sarissa powering up for each one you kill, and by the time you can reach her with your followers she's likely too strong to take out with whoever you have left. Enhance her for 6 and she resurrects your highest-cost destroyed Ward followers — formerly this synergized with Wilbert, but Anvelt is the new hot target, as resurrecting him this way also triggers his boardwipe ability.
• Evolve Midrange Sword remains a strong contender, largely unfazed by set rotation as it lost nothing important. It also got some more crazy cards to round out its suite.
  • Did Alyaska's Exterminus Weapon not provide enough hard removal for Sword? Here comes Nahtnaught. Her Tyrant's Order spell looks a little clunky, as you have to pick 3 enemy cards and destroy all other enemy followers, but this sneaks around followers who can't be targeted by card effects and punishes players using many amulets. When she's enhanced for 6, not only does she automatically evolve, but she summons 2 of her Henchmen to the enemy board to help facilitate the use of Tyrant's Order. Not that the Henchmen will be staying around for long — her 3-damage end-of-turn ability can kill a Henchman, which will then summon a 2/2 Steelclad Knight to the opposite side of the field. Wise use of Nahtnaught's abilities can let you take down an enemy board while building your own, on top of fueling evolves for a cheaper Exterminus Weapon.
  • Reinhardt is also very strong. When he takes any amount of damage that doesn't immediately kill him, he heals it off and becomes stronger. Unlike Yurius, his Healing Factor triggers during either player's turn; it has a cap of 10 times a turn, but it's nigh-impossible for one to have the resources to get there. If he's evolved (and if you've evolved enough followers prior, he will be), his healing ability also heals the leader. Reinhardt is nearly impossible to take out without hard removal, and he can easily bring the efforts of an aggro deck to a screeching halt.
• Invincible Monster Trio is extremely overloaded. Rush, Bane and Ward already makes a very good value package for a 7pp 6/6, but then it goes and deals 3 damage to the enemy leader at the end of the turn, and if you kill them, their Last Words takes out one of your followers at random. Oh, and when you play this card, they create a copy of themselves for 15 Shadows just to give the opponent an even harder time. But that's not all — if you've invoked Gremory, Death Teller, then her leader effect refunds all the shadows and all the play points you spend on the Trio so you can move on to other crazy plays like another copy of the Trio! There were decks built around summoning multiple copies of the Trio and giving them Storm so that they can essentially kill an undefended player rightaway. On 27 October 2020, the Trio would be nerfed to a 5/5 and their burn damage watered down to 2.
• One of the strongest decks in November 2020 is Rally Portal, which was effectively a Master of All, using Puppets to negotiate the early game while fueling the "enter battlefield" counts for Rally and "followers destroyed" counts for their game-enders Iceschillendrig and Wretched Tryst. Illganeau was a major player for the deck, being a 1pp 1/1 with Resurrective Immortality who can be safely played in almost any situation while furthering all of Rally Portal's goals. She was flexible enough to fit into other Portal decks too. Eventually she would be nerfed to a 2pp 2/1 to curb her ubiquity.
• On 25 January 2021, Maiser was given a couple of modifications to boost his play rate. Now, he generates a Dutiful Steed when played, and his Rapid Fire token spell now costing 1pp but doing 2 damage instead. These were minor-looking changes on paper but they greatly revolutionized his utility. Maiser generating a Dutiful Steed meant you could get at least one Rapid Fire through his ability with minimal setup, and his evolve ability reducing the Rapid Fires to 0pp made him a mean Spellboost engine. It's definitely pushed Spellboost Rune up a notch in popularity, to the chagrin of players entering the Rotation Cup a few weeks later.

Unlimited

• With the launch of the mini-expansion, Skullfane, which languished in disuse, was given an additional effect: Each time the player plays an amulet, its cost went down. This worked out fantastically — some would say too well — as it birthed a new Haven deck focusing on throwing down a lot of cheap amulets before popping them with Skullfane to bypass the long Countdown. Much like Atomy of its current day, a Skullfane deck on a good day will create a full field of tough followers as early as turn 4, but unlike Atomy, it can reliably wipe the board, heal itself, deliver direct damage, or fall back on an alternate win condition. It would eventually get nerfed to a base cost of 10 on January 25 2021 to delay its highroll, and in a nick of time, too, as the Unlimited Cup would have begun and an unchecked Skullfane would run wild.

Eternal Awakening

• One of the most prominent elements of the Rotation meta is "bike dragon", which used the buff-centric elements of Rivyale Dragon cards to put out an aggressive game plan. But the absolute top-ender of the Dragon game plan, aggressive or not, is Ghandagoza. He's got a very simple but very strong effect — when he attacks an enemy he also hits the enemy leader with damage equal to his current attack. He's got a hefty cost of 9, but when you're playing Dragon you can easily reach 9pp as soon as turn 5 or 6. It's not unusual for him to drop down on the endgame and provide just enough burst damage to secure a fast win. Some games just involve the Dragon player ramping and drawing their way to drop back-to-back Ghandagozas to obliterate the opposition before they can heal out of lethal range.
• Another deadly element in Dragon's lineup is Razia, Vengeful Cannonlancer. She's a 2/4 with Ward and gets the full +2/+2 on evolve, and when Clashing she gets a permanent +1/+0. That already makes her an Increasingly Lethal Enemy, which all culminates in her Last Words that deals her attack as damage to the enemy leader. So unless you have a way to banish her, you're forced into a Morton's Fork — kill her and take massive face damage, not kill her... and still take massive face damage. This is part of the sum that gives Dragon the midgame damage to push the opponent to lethal by Ghandagoza.

Darkness Over Vellsar

Rotation

• Last Words Shadow was essentially Overshadowed by Awesome especially in the face of its Aggro counterpart which won its games much faster, so Cygames saw it fit to bump it up a notch in the mini-expansion. Enter Wicked Rebirth, a 1pp spell that destroys one of your followers, reanimates specifically a follower with Last Words, and gives it a large attack boost and Rush. This essentially lets you make value trades and get two triggers of Last Words in one fell swoop. And it gets even better the later in the game you are — with a total of five or more dead Last Words followers you get a draw two to replenish your resources, and with a total of ten you get two procs of the reanimation ability to clean boards long after your evolve points are exhausted!
  • The secret to Last Words Shadow's success was a mixture of very good elements coming together to produce a deck that has a game plan for many situations, and its most devastating endgame is the use of Darkest Desire, created by Ceres, in combination with attack-boosting effects like Bullet Bikes on a Linkstaff Necromancer. To rein in the deck, Darkest Desire will only check the original stats for its affected follower, reducing its damage output but also improving its healing potential.
• Ward Haven was also in the "reasonable but overshadowed" category until Haven's new legendary from the mini-expansion was unveiled. Abdiel has efficient stats for a ward with a powerful evolve effect that banishes anything, giving Ward Haven an answer to many threats. Such a strong effect is understandably counterbalanced by Abdiel not gaining any stats on evolve, but it can be a pain when she hits one of your centerpieces that you've had to mulligan for. On Enhance, you get a lingering effect that replenishes your evolve points as you play followers, allowing you to proactively trade constantly instead of having to hide behind your Wards. This also interacts favorably with Grimnir such that he can be used as a finishing blow with ease.

Unlimited

• Recent additions to Runecraft which were designed to keep Spellboost relevant in Rotation happened to be strong enough to function well enough in Dimension Shift decks. Between Magical Squirrel, Grimoire Sorcerer, and Crystal Witch from the previous set, Dimension Shift now has enough consistency to boost and draw their way to 20 or lower cards by turn 6 so that Crystal Fencer can deliver his colossal pentuple-Spellboost to enable Shift by then. Because those were all followers that Boost on Fanfare, Shift decks can build a board to help contest the midgame, and can even use them with a Dimension Shift or two to lethal rather than rely completely on Kuon! Now, it takes either a disastrous brick on Shift's part or the most bursty of aggro decks to defeat them. Those cards also function perfectly well in the aggressive Storm Spellboost variant, so it's difficult to tell the two decks apart until it's too late.

Renascent Chronicle

Rotation

• Jatelant, God of Prosperity was introduced in Vellsar, and had a wordy effect — for each destroyed allied amulet that game, Jatelant would do 1 of three things: banish an enemy follower, deal 3 damage and heal 3, or resurrect a destroyed allied follower. Each successive destroyed amulet would add on one of these effects in sequence, culminating in a 15 damage, 15 heal, full board banish, and full board rebuild at a total of 14 destroyed amulets. At the time of his release, Haven simply could not destroy enough amulets on its own to reach this threshold on curve. It could in Unlimited, but Jatelant's 7pp cost meant the game tended to end before he could land. Cut forward to Renascent Chronicle re-introducing Naterran Great Trees and a much more condensed way to generate them en masse to promote its synergies. Now, Jatelant can hit the board at near-max capacity on curve in Rotation and create a swing so drastic that it's almost impossible to recover from, and most Rotation decks had difficulty defeating the Haven player before Jatelant came knocking. It's that bad that many Rotation players would prefer to play in Unlimited of all things rather than try to fight amidst the early Rotation environment. Thus, to curb Haven, Jatelant's effect was radically changed. He now deals 3, heals 3, banishes 1 and resurrects 1 at baseline, and this effect repeats itself only once and while there are 7 or more amulets destroyed in the game, greatly limiting the swing in advantage he creates but also making him a decent card in Take Two.
• Also wielded by the Jatelant deck is Vengeful Sniper. She deals damage to an enemy follower and the enemy leader equal to half your destroyed amulets (rounded up) so she gets gradually stronger just like Jatelant. On evolve, she also gets to banish an enemy follower with 3 or less defense. Previously, starting from her debut in Rivayle she'd be fair game as her damage either serves to pick off stragglers or soften enemies up for her evolve effect, all for a fair 2pp 2/2 that gave enough breathing room to play something else in the midgame. But with the number of amulets you could cycle with ease Sniper can ramp up very quickly, and is usually the nail in the coffin to secure lethal after a Jatelant or two. Sniper would get nerfed slightly to a 3pp 2/3 to offset the amount of value she can get.
• The contender that can reliably beat Jatelant in Rotation is Combo Forest. It takes the base Fairy aggro core, adds a few combo extenders, and suddenly you can deliver massive damage with Ladica, Verdant Claw or summon Deepwood Anomalies off of Life Banquet! The key player here is Heroic Resolve — particularly its first effect, which bumps up your number of cards played for the turn without needing anything else. This lets you access ludicrous combos and makes the "awesome" of Difficult, but Awesome a lot more accessible. (Mind you, the deck was still difficult to pilot, so it's less popular but no less stronger than Jatelant). Thus, Heroic Resolve received two changes — first being the removal of its +1 cards played, and the removal of Ward on the final layer of its effect, leaving you still vulnerable to Storm and aggression if you gave up too much of your early game tempo to set up your combo.
• After nerfs eliminated Jatelant from Rotation and took Combo Forest down a peg, the next threshold guardian that rose in popularity was Machina Portal, made much more accessible with a prebuilt deck that provided its basic skeleton. The central focus is the Renascent version of Belphomet who, on summon, provides a very powerful token, and creates even more of his powered-up Furies if he were fused with more Machina cards at the time. He doesn't demand too much of an investment — just two cards is enough for full potential — and the cards in Renascent gave you plenty of access to Machina token cards for fusion fodder. Belphomet's board is very hard to break since you'd have to overcome an 8/8, a destruction-resistant 9/10, a 6/9 with Ward, and a 4/13 with Ambush that's providing heals, face damage, and evolve point replenishment. In between, the deck also has other wincons — Absolute Tolerance can be played for almost free and was Storm damage with removal that can end games on its own, while Maisha can be evolved in the endgame to single-handedly crush an undefended opponent. All of these combined makes the deck feel like a Boss Battle, but its one weakness is that its power plays restrict themselves to turn 9 or later. This meant that it was held back by Jatelant before nerfs, and post-nerfs, the new decklists that follow aim to defeat before turn 9 or have a good out to the Belphomet board. If your deck had neither, it would struggle in the Rotation ladder.

Rotation and Unlimited

• What's it take for Swordcraft to become playable amidst the numerous faster contenders? Turns out, it just needs to land the killing blow even faster! Mistolina and Bayleon appear as a single card in Renascent and they make for a very overloaded card. Storm and Ward on a 4/6 for 6pp is already pretty good, but they also deal 5 damage to a random enemy follower so a single Ward follower is not enough to keep them from attacking face. But there's more — if you discard an amulet on top of that they gain +2/+1 and if it was a Naterran Great Tree the player regains 3 play points for extra value! What creates the loop is their interaction with Dramatic Retreat, which shuffles a free copy of them into the deck. With those spare play points you can fish them out again with cards like Pompous Summons, Sunny Day Encounter, or Armed Butler, and then you get to play them again, regain 3pp and reset the cycle. On a good day the deck juggles Mistolina and Bayleon three times with an evolve, dealing a lethal 20 damage on turn 6 if the opponent has no mitigation or Wards to save them. Oh, and this deck has also made its rounds across Unlimited, too, so you can never fully evade it. After being an infamously overloaded powerhouse for the Renascent metas and the next one to come, the duo would be pushed to a 7pp card to delay how soon the combo can happen.
• Of the original leaders that got their own card adaptations, none are more infuriating to fight than Isabelle. Her fusion requirement is other Runecraft followers, and in exchange she puts out 1-cost spells, starting with Quadra Magic and escalating into familiar good stuff like Insight and Crimson Sorcery. Quadra Magic itself functions as a cheap boardwipe that can clear out aggressive boards, giving the advantage against Runecraft's usual weakness, and once the player's cast at least 7 different spells (easily accomplished by Accelerating their followers or using other spells that can put more token spells in hand) it generates Elements of Creation which does 10 damage and heals 10 by itself! Isabelle alone answers Spellboost's biggest flaws and provides them with an alternate win condition to boot, and she's strong enough to influence both Rotation and Unlimited! At the end of October 2021, both Quadra Magic and Elements of Creation would get an increase in cost to delay the burst damage, and the condition to create Elements of Creation would be bumped up to 8 spells instead to delay it even further.

Dawn of Calamity

• Despite its introduction a couple of sets prior, Absolute Tolerance has had plenty of time to show its strength. It has a whopping 30pp base cost, but this cost gets discounted based on the damage done by your followers. This counts both combat damage and effect damage coming off followers, so followers with a damaging Evolve effect like Mega Enforcer can cut out a large chunk off its cost, and Magna Zero at 10 Resonance activations can make it almost completely free. And when you play it, it destroys an enemy follower and is a whopping 9/9 with Storm, so when it comes knocking the opponent's going to take massive damage. The development of sources of follower-based damage have made most Portal decks gravitate towards "Hold the Line until you can drop one or two Tolerances for game", and this has been made more accessible with Calamity's Genesis that makes it easier to have a Tolerance charging in your hand for most of the game. Its ability to deliver game-ending burst had not gone unnoticed; the patch at the end of 2021 would turn Tolerance into a 9/9 with Rush, and it will require an evolve point to regain Storm but without any stat increase.
• Bloodsucker of the Night summons 2 Forest Bats on entry, and whenever Forest Bats enter play, including the ones out of her Fanfare, she gives each one Storm; if Wrath isn't active she pings the leader for each Bat entering, and if it's active she gives it Bane and Drain. This card is a valuable asset in making Wrath Blood tick in Rotation, and another tool that works in the Unlimited Wrath core. Storm to the Bats is quite significant, as they can put out chip damage that can make the difference between victory and defeat in corner cases, and when she gives them Drain you can get guaranteed token amounts of healing by smacking the enemy leader that can edge you out of defeat. She even has fantastic synergy with Gift for Bloodkin and Nightscreech if you're starved for the last bits of damage to close games with. Cygames eventually toned her down by swapping Storm with Rush, greatly reducing her ability to influence or end games.

Unlimited

• Artifact Portal gains Genesis Artifact, a 4pp 2/5 that, when evolving, creates two Ward Artifact Tokens — a 1/3 that can't be destroyed by effects, and a 3/1 that takes no effect damage. Play it while you have 6 different destroyed Artifacts (which it and its Wards greatly contribute to) and you generate Cannon Artifacts — 1pp 2/2 Storm units that damage enemy boards (or the enemy leader if they're out of creatures). Genesis Artifacts does almost everything by throwing up a fearsome defense and providing game-ending firepower. Combine with Augmentation Bestowal and you can gain card advantage and cover the play point cost; buff everything with an Accelerated Shion and you have a board that's nearly difficult to break. Genesis Artifact (or any of Portal's kit in general) evaded the October 2021 nerfs, and when the Unlimited Grand Prix launched shortly afterwards, it's made itself known as one of the strongest decks in the format.
  
  The strength of Artifact Portal's synergy between Augmentation Bestowal and Acceleratium has been a longstanding issue since Augmentation's introduction, and the Genesis Artifact inclusion has only served to aggravate the situation. Players had been clamoring for either piece of the combo to be nerfed for months. Eventually, in the mid-November update, Acceleratium would be restricted to offset the strength of Artifact Portal — the additional Rush has proven too effective in allowing Portal to destroy any semblance of an opposing board for almost no cost.

Omen of Storms

Rotation

• Rotation hit many decks hard, leaving Evolve Necromancy Shadow, whose power players were recent introductions, to take the top spot. Key plays include using the combo of Cernunnos and Suzy to get two evolves for the price of one, rapidly stacking Shadows to repeatedly revive Suzy, and turbocharging Skeleton Raider to a very low cost so that he can clear wards, wipe enemy boards, and deal burst damage all in one fell swoop. On top of that, if Skeleton Raider was discounted enough times, there would be room to play Grimnir for 4pp to deal enough burst damage to finish the enemy off. Within a week of the set's debut, Rotation's ladder was essentially dominated by Evolve Shadow, such that Grimnir and Wicked Rebirth got nerfed.
  • Grimnir had always been a game-ender for any evolve-focused deck since his introduction. The fact that he didn't need to be in your hand to charge for his threshold made him more potent than the similar Union Burst and Skybound Art mechanics. Every match against an evolve deck, in the late game, could be decided by whether one could put out enough followers on the board to redirect Grimnir's pings away from face. Evolve Shadow took this ridiculousness to new heights as it was not uncommon for them to wipe the board easily and then drop two Grimnirs back-to-back for a total of 20 damage that most Damage Reduction effects available could not prevent. Grimnir would thus be bumped up to a 6pp card to make it harder to squeeze him into a turn and make it impossible to play two of him in a turn.
  • Wicked Rebirth was already plenty strong at its introduction, and even though Last Words Shadow fell off in use in Rotation it still sees regular use in Evolve Necromancy Shadow. Its most ideal combo was in combination with Guiding Bellringer Angel since she provides card draw on her own death and was easily searched by Otherworld Gatekeeper, and easily falls within the reanimation criteria for Rebirth. The deck didn't really need to hit 10 Last Words followers — just five for the draw 2 in addition to Bellringer's own card draw provided it with plenty of card advantage and some very stubborn Wards to hide behind. Wicked Rebirth would thus get its cost increased from 1 to 2 and also reworded to specifically reanimate Shadowcraft followers to stop its interaction with Bellringer.

Unlimited

• Bellerophon became the new focus of Unlimited Heal Haven decks. Her Evolve effect creates a leader effect that damages all enemies whenever you are healed, letting you maintain board control and comboing perfectly with Holy Bowman Kel. Two Kels and a Bellopheron meant you needed just 4 healing procs to kill an opponent from a full 20 health, a feat entirely possible by turn 7.

Edge of Paradise

Unlimited

• One of the most fearsome Festive cards to be released Paracelise, Demon of Greed. She invokes when her player starts their turn with no cards in hand (before their opening draw), and when she enters play regardless of method, she deals 2 damage to the enemy leader, heals you for 2, and draws an extra card. To further synergize with herself, if discarded she shuffles two more copies of herself into the deck, and when evolving she discards 3 cards from your hand for a powerful 5 damage to any enemy follower to set up another invoke. Paracelise fuels a very aggressive strategy, turning the usual disadvantage of losing steam into a win condition, and her bonus damage and healing can give additional reach to close games or stave off narrow mirror matches. And Unlimited has loads of low-cost Blood cards to let the player empty their hand even without any discard assistance, sometimes going handless as early as turn 1 and defeating players as fast as turn 4. Handless Blood is so dominant in Unlimited that the other dominant force is heal Haven designed to outlast the aggression, and some other decks have resorted to running Birth of the Ravenous specifically to counter Paracelise's invoke condition. It speaks volumes that the mini-expansion introduced Glistering Angel as a counter to Paracelise (and other Invoke effects) and she's seen effective use as a non-intrusive tech.
• Unlimited Dimension Shift got two strong additions to punish slower decks:
  • Chakram Wizard is a 5-cost follower that discounts per boost. On Fanfare or Evolve he deals 3 damage to an enemy follower and spellboosts the cards in your hand, letting you stabilize while furthering your win condition. You will need even stronger aggression to push for lethal on a Shift deck...
  • Story of a Lifetime is meant to synergize with Festive Rune's "drew 15+ cards" archetype, but it's a perfectly functional standalone card, discarding unusable cards that clog the hand to dig deep into the deck and get you to the 20 card threshold to trigger Crystal Fencer. With this, Dimension Shift can now very consistently trigger Crystal Fencer on turn 5 or 6, and the Shift combo can fire within those same turns barring a terrible brick!
• To get a leg up on the competition, Forestcraft in Unlimited has developed Hozumi OTK. Game plan is as follows: Play two 0-cost Wisps, then two 1-cost Fairies, then Hozumi herself to exchange your Fairies and Wisps for four followers from your deck — usually Lymaga, Omnis, Wind Fairy, and Cynthia to buff the rest when they attack, totaling to exactly 20 damage. Evolve Hozumi to also transform enemy Wards into Fairies to dismantle opposing defenses! The game plan sacrifices early board presence and pressure but can execute the OTK as early as turn 5, further contributing to the Rocket-Tag Gameplay issue of the Unlimited format.

Roar of the Godwyrm

Rotation

• Flame and Glass, Duality is a fantastic 7pp 7/7 Storm from the previous set that can be fused with either Flame or Glass, which on their own are mediocre basic Gold cards. When you play her and she's fused with either of them, you destroy all the opponent's cards; if she's fused with both, you also get 6 play points back. Normally Awesome, but Impractical due to needing to run her components for best value, she first saw play as a Reanimate target in Shadow. Flash forward to Godwyrm and Resonance Portal in Rotation can cycle through the deck so much with its new support that you can easily draw into Flame & Glass and her fusion components with regularity without bricking badly, and she serves well as a finisher on top of Cassim shredding your board and life to bits. Flame & Glass would be nerfed to an 8pp 6/6 on 6 July 2022 to reduce her game-ending ability.
• Ultimate Bahamut rears its head as a Neutral legendary engine of destruction. The main payoff of playing Ultimate Bahamut is its invoke effect — at the end of your turn, if you've expended at least 50 play points, this 13/13 behemoth jumps onto the field and erases all but 5 cards in the opponent's deck. Bahamut itself also facilitates this invocation with its accelerate effect that refunds some of the play points spent on it, and it synergizes with Terra Finis that also refunds play points to further this condition, and then proceeds to blow up the enemy board after Bahamut invokes itself. Combined with other ways for most decks to get play point refunds, the end game plan of those decks sometimes boils down to "stall until you can invoke Bahamut and put the opponent on an imminent ticking clock." Not helping matters is that Bahamut's invocation also erases opposing Bahamuts waiting to be invoked, so mirror matches (or decks with similar endgame plans) get decided by whoever triggers the invocation effect first.

Unlimited

• The next card to create a crazy deck in Unlimited is... the humble Robopup. When you play it, you destroy an allied follower and draw a card, and you get to evolve this card into a 3/1 if you destroyed an Artifact this way. It's used in Rotation as a way to manually destroy your own Artifacts to further your win conditions, but what truly broke it was its super low cost and cycling ability, which combo'd especially well with Augmentation Bestowal. Unlimited became filled with Robopup decks that endlessly cycle the dog, drawing through the deck and stuffing the deck with more Robopups, synergizing with Cassim to repeatedly trigger Resonance and damage the enemy leader. And if Cassim wasn't enough, Yuwan's final effect would finish the job. The deck highlighted the crazy potential of Augmentation Bestowal — especially if you could stack two of them in a turn — thus getting Augmentation Bestowal restricted to 1 per deck in the Unlimited format on 6 July 2022.
  • Turns out the Augmentation restriction wasn't enough as Portal on a very good day can still slice the opponent's health and board to ribbons with Cassim. So, on 26 July 2022, they saw it fit to restrict Cassim (and his sister Rosa, who summons him when evolving) to kick Resonance Portal down another notch.

Celestial Dragonblade

Rotation

• Yet again, Portal would be one of the dominating forces in Rotation due to the versatility of the tools it has. Puppet and Calamity Portal, in particular, made use of waves of easily-destroyed followers to contest the board and quickly discount Absolute Chastity, which can erase an enemy threat on Fanfare and refill the player's hand on evolving. Summon Divine Treasure is also a ridiculously flexible card that can be Enhanced for future reuse and easy board presence — in particular the Eternal Dogma token gave end-of-turn healing and card draw to stave off aggression that would otherwise threaten it. Thus, the early October patch would crank up Chastity's cost from 10 to 14 to make it harder to play early, and remove the end-of-turn healing from Dogma to reduce Portal's staying power.

Unlimited

• Handless Blood, since its inception, continued to be an aggressive threat in both formats, even with counters coming up to try and rein it in. Its best-case scenario invovled emptying the hand with 0-cost cards and then dropping a Bat Usher, which was a 1pp 1/2 at the time that gained a total of +2/+2 and Storm if no other cards were in hand. Through this high-roll, you would get a 3/4 Storm unit which the opponent cannot deal with for at least two turns, on top of setting up for Paracelise's invocation by turn 2 which nobody can get back from. The devs saw it fit to nerf Bat Usher to a 2pp 2/2 (without any change in abilities) to eliminate this high-roll situation.

Eightfold Abyss Azvaldt

Rotation

• The first two weeks of the format were dominated by Spellboost, no thanks to Simael, Cleansing Enforcer being a fantastic Spellboost payoff. But Simael alone didn't just carry Spellboost Rune — he was played alongside Adherent of Elimination, a 0/2 Storm unit that grows stronger with each card you play. Spellboost would play Adherent and then a whole storm of 0-cost cards that have been discounted by Spellboost (or cards that refunded their cost) to jack up his stats, and then slap down one or two Simaels to slaughter the opponent with Storm damage, sometimes as soon as turn 6. In response, Cygames changed Adherent to strictly have Rush instead of Storm, though players would go on to swap Adherent with Kuon as an alternative Spellboost payoff.

Unlimited

• The innocuous Garuel, Seraphic Leo proceeded to make Hozumi OTK even stronger. Using Garuel to make a 2-drop Neutral follower free grants you two cards played for 1pp. This means that with two Fairy Wisps in hand you can hit 4 cards on the board followed by Hozumi on turn 4. After it proceeded to also terrorize Rotation with a Hozumi combo variation in the Azvaldt format, it would be nerfed on 19 Feb 2023, only applying its discount to Neutral followers with an original cost of 5 or higher instead of just a Neutral follower of any cost.
• Atomy, once again, broke the Unlimited format by proccing a new follower ahead of time: Abyssal Colonel is a stormy mountain of stats and can be Crystallized for 2, and is easy to search with its Condemned tag. It's basically Coffin-Zeus but in a condensed package! It's not uncommon to see Atomy players devote all their resources to putting out three Colonels on the board to OTK the opponent on turn 4 to 5, and if they don't get the kill, the resulting board is still very hard to negotiate. Players have even started teching in Planetary Fracture again just to deal with this menace. After years of creating unfair board states, Atomy would finally get nerfed on 25 January 2023 by going down to 1pp rather than 0 when the player controls four cards, delaying the dreaded turn 4 Atomy highroll since he no longer clears your board for free.
• Another strong contender was Earth Rite Rune, which had a similarly strong high-roll. By turn 3 it could amass a huge Stack of Sigils and consume them all at once with Orichalcum Golem's Accelerate effect, easily fulfilling the "7 Stacks consumed" requirement for several Earth Rite cards. Orichalcum Golem's Accelerate cost would be increased from 1pp to 2pp to match Atomy's nerf.
• Following Atomy's nerf, three other strong decks filled the power gap it created. One was Hozumi OTK, detailed above and shot down with the Garuel nerf. The other two were Earth Rite and Wrath Blood. The important pieces that aided their consistency and furthered their win conditions were Starseer's Telescope and Restless Parish respectively, which were basically free cards that dug through the deck and pushed it closer to its victory condition threshold. Those cards were created in very old sets and used to support those strategies in their infancy, but they're so Simple, yet Awesome that they've withstood the test of time and have supported new synergies and win conditions for those archetypes. Both cards would be the first cards to be banned in Unlimited to depower those decks.

Academy of Ages

Rotation

• Right off the bat, a slew of balance changes were enacted to knock down several decks.
  • After singlehandedly rescuing Wrath Blood by creating an invoke Flauros on turn 3, Scorching Grandiosity would be bumped up to from 1pp to 2pp in order to neutralize the highroll.
  • To hit Last Words Shadow and injure Unlimited Atomy, Abyssal Colonel went from a 6/6 to a 4/6, reducing the OTK potential of proccing three of them in one go.
  • Judith was the sole carry of Cutthroat Enhance Portal, so all of her Enhance effect costs were bumped up by 1pp to curb her strength.
  • Since Lilium is singlehandedly allowing Discard Dragon to flourish again, Noir & Blanc, the deck's ultimate payoff, retained their indestructibility while evolved but stayed as a 4/4 rather than a 6/6 so they're easier to answer. Uranus, an alternate win-con, was pushed up to 4pp to keep the player from dropping multiples of him on an unsuspecting opponent. As it turns out, these nerfs were a mere slap on the wrist to Discard Dragon, and it would become one of the dominating forces in early Academy Rotation.
  • To curb Armed Dragon, Hammer Dragonewt's bonus stats were reduced to a +1/+1 instead of a +2/+2. The Draconic Smash token is no longer a free spell and now costs 1pp. Ironscale Serpent was also bumped from a 3pp to 4pp card so that it cannot snowball the opponent in an early advantage.

Unlimited

• Was Handless Blood not fast enough? Seductress Vampire was un-nerfed for the Custom Rotation event, so she grants free, riskless Vengeance again! Since Handless Blood goes through a lot of Card Cycling, they can easily draw into an early Seductress Vampire — the fact that she auto-banishes herself when drawn also is a boon since it helps with emptying the hand for Paracelise. Now, not only do you have to worry about the aggressive Festive discard synergies, you now had to negotiate with Vengeance-based burst damage from the likes of Mach-Speed Maron, Skull, Freedom Raider, and Galom, Empress Fist.
• One of the better decks in the format is Burial Rite Shadow, using all the cheap Burial Rite triggers it can muster to draw through the Deck and proc the Invoke triggers of Lakandula and Conquering Dreadlord. This typically accumulates enough Shadows and makes the deck small enough to fulfill the Invoke condition of Gremory, Death Teller by turn 6, so you get two copies of Deathly Tyrant (or a mix of that and any high Necromancy effect) to OTK the opponent. Following the conclusion of the May 2023 Unlimited Cup, Inn Ghosthound, which is a very cheap 1pp 1/1 Burial Rite follower, would be nerfed to a 2pp 1/2 from May 29th to reduce the deck's ability to consistently turbo through itself.

Heroes of Rivenbrandt

Unlimited

• A new addition is Lazuli, Gateway Liberator. She's a 3/3 Artifact who adds two 1-cost Radiant Artifacts into your deck and fetches a 1-cost spell. This last bit is what lets her search for Augmentation Bestowal, leading to Artifact Decks that fish for her, combo with Robopup and dig for those Radiant Artifacts for an OTK as early as turn 4 or 5. Augmentation Bestowal would be emergency-banned on 10th July 2023.

Order Shift

Rotation

• Once again, rotation has proven generally unkind to several decks barring a few, leaving Loot Sword and Heal Haven to dominate. There are outliers competing for third place, but the top two most popular decks beat them by a mile in popularity.
  • This iteration of Loot Sword operates off generating Loot Tokens so that Barbaros and her Condemned Crew can make Dread Pirate's Flag. Paired with this is Rogers, Ruler of the Seas who provides incremental chip damage that puts the opponent closer to lethal for the final burst. Barbaros' Enhance at 7 Loot + Rogers' Evolve effect + any other source of Flag leads to a total of 15 damage in one go, and only a board with removal-resistant followers can just mitigate part of this burst. Because Barbaros' crew was introduced in Azvaldt, they lost very little and gained consistency tools and defenses in Order Shift to help achieve their win condition.
  • Heal Haven in this Rotation format bears strong resemblance to Elana Haven, and its best tools are tied to the Academy of Ages expansion that also didn't lose much in rotation. The deck is carried by Elluvia, whose evolve effect mimics Elana's Prayer — only that she's a tough Ward follower with an end-of-turn heal to also grant an immediate benefit without needing to wait. The deck also uses a lot of healing triggers from followers with Fanfare or through fusing Academic cards into Verdilia, with the aim of building a board too tough to crack that will threaten lethal next turn. Should the opponent persist and keep the board clear, in comes Jeanne, Worldwalker who can pair with two cheap followers to wipe the opponent's board in turn, hit face by herself, and make her fellow followers immune to effect damage to boot, basically demanding another boardwipe to answer. The amount of healing and resilience of followers involved made Heal Haven match pretty well against Loot Sword and secured it a comfortable second place in popularity.