Monday 13 October 2014

Remaining Competitive Without Legendaries, A New(er) Player Guide

In this article, we’ll be looking at several decklists for newer players, who have a sizeable Heroic collection but lack most Legendaries required to make tier one competitive decks.

Each deck will have an example list, a deck overview, and potential legendaries to further improve your deck.



About the Author: Having played Solforge for ~10 months, Eon is still prone to misplays and missing Allied triggers, also incredibly lazy and fond of procrastination, it’ll be a wonder that this article will be out before trading. Most often seen at Kaelari’s Ladder or Solforge streams.


Yetis
Creatures






Spells


3x Burnout



Almost fittingly so, we start off with Yetis, mention ‘budget deck’ to people who have been playing since Rise of the Forgeborn, they will almost assuredly say Yetis, as it was the first archetype that while strengthened by legendaries, was still potent without them.

Often, you are aiming to fill up your side of the board while removing opposing threats with Wallbreaker/ Glacial Crush in combination with Icemage and through Warlord procs, buffing up your side of the board with Weirwood Patriarch and Ferocious Roar.

However, the downfall of Yetis is that they have mediocre stats and are synergy dependant, hence, if your opponent is able to prevent you from establishing board control, the deck often ends up being lackluster.

Rageborn Hellion, Everflame Phoenix, Cindersmoke Wyvern, Thundersaur all make solid additions to this deck. Rage of Kadras is also a possible consideration.


Zombies

Creatures






Spells





Zombies aims to win by destroying your opponent’s creatures for ‘free’ through Xrath’s Will and then out-valuing your opponent with solid creatures. Grimgaunt Predator forms a secondary win condition with the deck, as it has many ways of reducing the opposing creatures’ stats to make for tasty tasty food for your Predator. Focus on leveling Darkshapers and Predators early on, and obtain value from Xrath’s Will as much as possible.

As discussed above, Zombies lack win conditions and thats the greatest downfall of the deck, its possible that your creatures are simply outmatched as while many Zombies have solid stats in their own right, none of them are ‘bombs’ in the sense they win you the game in their own right. Also, if the game drags on for long enough, your Darkshapers can prove to be less effective, or even useless as the number of underleveled cards decrease.

Oros and Thundersaur are compliments to this deck for their win condition qualities, Zimus and Keeper of the Damned have good synergy with each other, and while they need to be leveled to maintain relevancy, they can be removed with Tomb Pillager.


Burn

Creatures


Spells


3x Burnout

(Decklist courtesy of Jabor, who piloted this deck in the Unlegendary Qualifier on Kaeleri’s Ladder)

A deck with top notch removal and a powerful late game, yet cursed with a weak/boring early game. Level as many Flameshapers, Flamesculptors, Flamebreak Invokers (depends on matchup) and Predators as you can get away with in PL1. While it is often tempting to use your spells to clear the opposing board, you need to get your threats leveled to reach the endgame. Also, even if you have to level spells, it is often optimal to NOT level your Static Shocks in order to get crazy damage with your Savants.

Getting beatdown and being slightly draw dependant does throw a wrench into the deck’s plan, but overall its a pretty solid deck.

Rage of Kadras is really the only legendary that stands out as a want, with Everflame Phoenix a possible consideration.



Broodqueen Trackers
Creatures


3x Dysian Broodqueen
3x Xithian Direhound


3x Aetherphage
3x Bramblewood Tracker
2x Lifeblood Dryad
3x Weirwood Patriarch
3x Shardbound Invoker
2x Swampmoss Lurker
2x Tanglesprout


Spells


2x Dysian Siphon


2x Ferocious Roar
2x Lysian Shard


As our last deck for this short write-up, we’re be looking at Broodqueen Trackers (BQT), a deck that is extremely prevalent in the unlegendary queue at the moment.

Aim to level as many Trackers and Broodqueen as possible in PL1, and use Weirwood Patriarch opportunistically as well to turn them into much more scary bodies. Once PL2 comes around, Trackers have many things to bring to the party, Tanglesprout, Swampmoss, unlevelled Aetherphages and arguably the best of the underdrops mentioned, Shardbound Invoker. The deck mostly plays itself, the only thing to keep in mind is who to kill with Brooqueen.

Draw order is important for this deck, and that can really screw you over. Broodqueen into Weirwood Patriarch is a lot stronger than the reverse.

Scatterspore Eidolon, which is essentially a better Tanglesprout in this deck. and Grimgaunt Doomrider, whose synergy with Broodqueen is supreme.

Closing Thoughts

I hope you enjoyed the first article from Team Dental Floss Team Battlebranded. As a follow-up, two Solforge Specific Card Analysis, will be released alongside this article, and hopefully two more every week after.


As always, may the odds ever be in your favor ;3.


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