The deck I was first drawn to playing is the so called "Rune Spellchain OTK" deck, which really is a One Turn Kill deck dressed up as a control deck. I found a list on a blog which was a little outdated but a fine place to start, and got all the cards together other than the priciest (~14Aud) card which I couldn't really justify buying without knowing how deep I was going to go into this.
The entire strategy of this deck is to jam it full of efficient removal and draw spells like a control deck to stabilise and get as many spells in the grave as possible for a high spell chain count. Then, you slam two or three (ideally three) of these:
Flame Destroyer
When you would play this follower, [Spellchain_5] Subtract 3 from its cost. [SC10] Subtract 6 instead. [SC15] Subtract 9 instead. [Rush]
The cost is in the upper left hand corner of the card, so yes, at Spellchain 15 this card is free to play. It also has the trait "Rush", which means it can attack enemy followers on the turn you play this card (but, notably, not your opponent. It's like half-haste)
So you've suddenly got 21 power on the board and your opponent is at their starting life total of 20. Time to do the time warp.
When you would play this spell, banish 10 spells from your graveyard: change it's cost to 7. Take an extra turn after this one.
I should have mentioned earlier that your PP caps out at 10, so this card is actually impossible to play without the cost reduction. You've already got spellchain 15 and you've played your Flame Destroyers (cool name by the way), so now you banish 10 of them to play this and take another turn. On the next turn, swing for 21. GG?
6th Sep - Locals - オレタン天神 22人 ~ Spellchain OTK
Round 1: Aggro Nightmare
This was the first game of tournament Shadowverse Evolve I've ever played and unfortunately I was drawn against the only guy I knew, Nico, who had started at the same time as me and was also here for the first time. This game was a bit of a wash because in our practice games together, we'd unfortunately been getting a very important rule wrong the entire time and it quite generously favoured the aggro player. We thought that when you evolve a Follower, it's free to attack wherever, but actually you cannot attack players unless the pre-evolved version could have attacked players as well. Nevertheless, it was a resounding loss to the stupid sexy vampires.
0 - 1
Round 2: Dragon Midrange Ramp
Playing this deck into Dragons for the first time was like doing pistol shrimp squats at the end of Leg Day at the gym. You find your weakest links very quickly. It was immediately evident that the deck has two glaring weaknesses in the face of a Dragon rich meta. The first, is that the Dragon deck is quite capable of gaining a reasonable amount of life through cards like this:
Shenlong
Evolve (2) : Evolve this follower.
[Ward]
Fanfare: Draw 2 cards. Discard a card from your hand.
Fanfare is this game's Enter the Battlefield Trigger
[Ward] is a trait which says you cannot attack other followers or your opponent if this card is tapped. I.e., you have to attack this first.
Shenlong (Evolved)
[Ward] Evolve: Add 5 to your leader's defense (life).
This is a massive problem because 3x7 is 21 (quick maths), and there's no chance they (or you) survive a whole extra turn after they're played. The deck plays very few other aggressive followers to achieve the Spellchain count required, so you have a fairly low max damage ceiling*.
The other problem, is this thing:
Dark Dragoon Forte (Evolved)
[Storm]
[Aura]
i.e. Haste, Hexproof
A deck loaded with spot removal just can't handle getting hit by 7 damage in successive turns by hasty untargettable dragon warrior dragoonbags (hereafter referred to as goonbag). There's a reason this card is so popular and at the core of this deck, but it was a fairly rough awakening to its power. The only answer this deck has to this Follower is its own Followers, which henceforth I knew to hold as a way to remove it. Unfortunately, you're still going to eat 7 every time.
0-2
Round 3: Bishop Control
This game was pretty funny honestly. My opponent's deck is a hard-control deck jammed full of removal, but without the combo finish. What this means is that we passed back and forth quite a lot while I loaded my graveyard freely with draw spells and poked here and there with my little shitter Followers. It looked like god wasn't quite on his side in the shitter war so he tapped out right around turn 7 (the DANGER turn) to deploy more threats to try to take back the tempo. Unfortunately for him I was able to sculpt the perfect hand due to the lack of pressure and dropped all three Flame Destroyers followed by a D-shift, untap and swing for lethal. Apparently he'd never seen D-shift before. These are the conversations you have at 0-2.
Penguin Wizard (My favourite shitter)
Evolve (1): Evolve this follower. Activate: [Act this card & Discard a spell]: Draw a card.
1-2
Round 4: Dragon Control (the salty runback)
Armed with my knowledge from round 2, I held my followers and Evolved them to smash into his Goonbags, which went a long way towards not dying. The version he was playing was more of a control variant, using this amulet to generate value and remove threats across the game.
Dracomancer's Rite
At the start of your end phase, if you discarded a card from your hand this turn, choose an enemy leader or an enemy follower. Deal 2 damage to it. Fanfare: [Discard a card from your hand]: Add 1 defense to your leader.
The speed of the deck was such that I had more time to chip away at his life total before I died, so I was able to combo out to secure a 2-2 (2-1 after the washed game) at the first event.
2-2
7th Sep - Locals - Cardlab 博多 9人 ~ Spellchain OTK
Armed with the lessons learned from the night before, I went into the event with a pretty high level of confidence and hoped to dodge dragons, which is probably not the best metagame strategy right now. Decklist was unchanged.
Round 1: Aggro Nightmare
Nico again... only this time we know the rules 8-)
Skeleton Fighter
Fanfare: If [Crimson] is active for you, gain +1/+1.
Crimson just means you've taken damage this turn.
Unfortunately for me, my hand was way too slow and I once again lost to his stupid sexy vampires. It feels like this matchup isn't quite in my favour, it just takes too long to set up the combo and a lot of Nightmare's damage is unavoidable, even with removal handy.
0-1
Round 2: Dragon Midrange Ramp
I knew this was going to be a tough, so I tried a slightly different tact this game. I decided I might need to deploy Flame Destroyers earlier than the combo turn, to get an extra 7 damage to compensate for all the life they gain. It nearly worked, but unfortunately for me my opponent made the correct play of removing my Flame Destroyer with an Execution (see below) rather than committing to being more aggressive. He definitely tanked on the decision for a while, and if he went aggro he was 100% dead. I think against a good player it's not going to work, as hoping they have no removal by turn 6 is a bit unrealistic.
Execution
[Quick] Choose an enemy card in play. Destroy it.
0-2
Round 3: The bye.
ZZZzzzzzzzzzzz..................
0-2
Post Event Thoughts
Sometimes it's you, and sometimes it's the deck, and it's pretty important to know how to recognise when it's one or the other. In this case I think it's both. I obviously require a lot more practice with the game in general, and to become familiar with the strategies and key cards that others are bringing to these events, but this deck seems quite unsuited to the meta. The list I copied was from a blog written before the release of this second set, which contained a lot of the cards that are currently vying for the position of my new sleep paralysis demon (I think it's definitely Goonbag).
I've got the pieces to make the Golemancy deck, so next week lets give that a rock hard go.
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