Grand Dreams

In my last article I wrote about how the Uma Museme set wasn't exactly setting the stage alight with its combination of card draw and mediocre beats, but it only took the player base another two weeks and a Grand Prix to change that story.  H.E.A.L.T.H.Y The top 8 finalists of GP Yokohama were equally split between Dragon and Uma Musume, with the title eventually going to Dragon. What changed? The tuned deck that has emerged is quite aggressive with a lot of deck speed (ability to draw and filter their cards), so overall it provides a very consistent game plan featuring big bodies and a solid top end. It seems to be able to pull together the best of a few different classes, with the card selection and cheap removal of Rune, the finishing power of Dragon/Sword, and the indiscriminate removal of Nightmare. It's a mid-rangey aggressive deck but with better follower stats than the Nightmare aggro deck and has forced the small-ball style aggro out of the meta, leaving Dragon to flou...

 This week is the first week that the new Uma Masume collaboration set is legal, but instead of buying all the hype around the new horse-trainer anime cards I took my trusty elves to Cardlab to show them that when it comes to horse riding, elves do it best. There really is an anime for everything The new set is unique in a few different ways. You can legally construct a deck using cards across all the different factions as long as they're all from this Uma Masume set. Or, as normal, you can pick a faction and include the Uma Masume cards from that faction with your regular Shadowverse Evolve cards. It also brings a new version of evolve called Racing, where you jam a carrot card under them (into them? Still unclear) and they "begin racing", which gives Rush and triggers various effects. I largely ignored the new set because I didn't really see anything worth including for my Elves, and with no interest in building the Uma deck it was a little bit tl;dr for me. Onto th...

It's been a real whirlwind of a week, so I thought I'd give my brain and stomach a break and pick the Golems back up with a few tweaks from  last time . In my personal notes from that event I had written that the deck tends to have some really clunky draws, so I attempted to smooth that out by lowering the curve just a tiny bit. I removed a 7pp Follower and a 4pp Follower for some 1-2pp removal, and added a third Merlin. Merlin Evolve (2): Evolve this follower.  Fanfare: Search your deck for a spell and add it to your hand. Merlin (Evolved) Evolve: Choose a spell that costs 3 play points or less from your graveyard. Play it for 0 play points. Merlin provides good value on a body for a reasonable cost, but maybe more importantly is a source of card selection in a game that is largely devoid of tutors and deck manipulation. It's such a solid card that we're playing it in the golem/earth material deck even though it has absolutely no explicit synergy with what the rest of ...

In advance of this week's ToUrNaMeNt RePoRt, a couple of cards caught my eye from upcoming releases and I thought I'd take the opportunity to pass swift judgment on them ahead of spoiler season where I will give my hot takes on all the new cards and see how right (or wrong) I turn out to be. I think for the time being I'm only going to bother trying to evaluate Rune and Elf cards because they're in my "wheelhouse" if I can even say that. Review System ★★★★★ Format defining. Grown men will pay a fortune for these. ★★★★ Solid. Can be built around/is always relevant. ★★★ Decent filler for an established strategy. ★★ You're desperate if you're trying this. ★ Wouldn't feed this to my dog. Wizardess of Oz Fanfare: Summon an "Earth Sigil". Add 1 to your [Stack], Draw a card. Quick/Activate: [Earth Rite]: The next time you would play a spell, this turn reduce 4 from its cost. This effect can only be activated once per turn First up is the somehow...