Learn from the best with a monthly Masterclass lesson from renowned pro player Yuki Lee Bender. This month, Yuki picks up Zenith Blade and sharpens it to a fine point, breaking down her competitive Hala, Bladesaint of the Vow decklist, honed with new cards from Mastery Pack Warrior, complete with sideboard guide and matchup tips!
Hala is a hero first introduced in her very own Armory Deck Origins earlier this year. Since release she has seen some moderate success, including a Pro Tour Top 64 in Las Vegas and a recent Battlegrounds win in Wilczek, but has otherwise remained somewhat out of the metagame spotlight. However, I believe with new support from Mastery Pack Warrior, Hala has received considerable upgrades that help improve both her power level and consistency, and let her shore up many of her weaknesses, especially into aggressive decks. Going forward, I expect Hala to be a strong metagame contender.
While previously, Hala presented excellent value turn-over-turn and could threaten to grind out most other fatigue-oriented heroes by repeatedly swinging her sword twice per turn, she lacked on-hits and ways to force aggressive decks to interact with her. However, with Mastery Pack Warrior she now has access to Drawn to the Blade, which sharpens and threatens on-hit draw for the rest of the turn in a similar manner to the Classic Constructed staple Savor Bloodshed. Additionally, she has recently gained access to Slice Up, which threatens on-hit discard at reaction speed, and Beckon Steel which threatens an additional sword swing also at reaction speed. These new tools combined with classic threats like Command and Conquer and The Weakest Link (which play very nicely off two blues, allowing Hala to swing for 4 with go again into a disruptive 2-cost) really give Hala the critical mass of on-hits she needs to feel like she is frequently threatening aggressive decks with threats they need to care about.
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Additionally, Hala could sometimes struggle with consistently swinging her sword twice every turn. While you can still draw hands without Flurry generation, this problem feels somewhat alleviated with access to Beckon Steel, And Again…, and Showdown or Big Blinder. Adding a few more ways to have access to additional swings has really helped smooth out the deck and make it feel more consistent and reliable, especially in longer matchups.
Dorinthea Pão de Queijo · Sep 25 · 71 min read0 likes00 comments0
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Finally, a problem Hala could run into previously is one of being very resource hungry, often needing at least 5 to play out most of her turn (3 for Hala and 2 for Zenith Blade). However, playing more than 27-30 blues would often lead to too many all-blue hands which could cause her to struggle when opponents chose to defend out. As a result, she often settled on a slightly greedy resource base that would lead her to draw all-red hands that could be extremely punishing more often than we would like. However, with the additions of Drawn to the Blade and Point of Escalation, she now has additional yellow cards that play like reds when resolved, granting her a lot more stability in her resource curve. These cards also provide premium threats in second cycle, especially Point of Escalation, which can be a great way to set up a pitch stack to close the game or push through a Beckon Steel.
In addition to these powerful yellow threats, Hala has also gained access to some premium blue cards as well. And Again… is worth an entire sword swing, which is usually worth at least 4 plus a Valiant Dynamo reset, if not more, which is an excellent rate for a blue. And Beckon Steel can offer a sharpen, an extra sword swing, and a Dynamo reset, making it worth at least 8 value if it resolves. In theory, these powerful blues could allow us to push our blue count even higher, but the yellows feel sufficient and instead we have a lot more ability to draw blue heavy hands that still convert well on offense. Once again bolstering her consistency.
While previously Hala decks would often lean quite defensive with cards like Sigil of Solace, Fiddler’s Green, and defense reactions to shore up her aggro matchups, I now believe Hala is best built in a more proactive manner to threaten to race and outvalue aggro decks. This more proactive slant gives her a lot more game into some of the formats top aggressive decks like Arakni, Marionette and Oscilio, Constella Intelligence, while still allowing her to lean on her excellent deck damage and turn-over-turn value into midrange and control decks.
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Equipment
Hala’s weapon and equipment are essential to her play patterns, so this section will discuss why these equipment are chosen, and how to best use them.
Zenith Blade
Zenith Blade more than anything else defines our deckbuilding direction, as it not only has an incredible rate of a 1-cost 3 attack, but also has free go again on our first attack should we find a way to sharpen. While many of our main deck cards have sharpen, we also can use Hala’s hero ability to allow us to pay 3 to sharpen if needed for on demand go again. The remaining piece of the puzzle is how to use the extra action point. Our primary way of doing this is combining sharpen with Flurry tokens or other ways to swing an additional time, allowing Hala to make use of the bonus from sharpen twice in the same turn. Cards like Edict of Steel and Toe the Line are essential for allowing us to repeatedly threaten two sword swings and are supplemented with some extra ways to do this in our blue base, including And Again…, Olé, and Beckon Steel.
However, even after adding all the on-rate ways to create Flurry tokens or generate an additional swing, we would still like even more redundancy in the deck. Here is where Command and Conquer and Ripple away come in, providing us with a 3-card-10 and a 3-card-8 respectively when paired with two blues and Hala’s hero ability. Command and Conquer helps us convert larger hands in a way that is on rate while also providing disruption, and Ripple Away lets us still have respectable damage on blue heavy hands, while also providing some good utility into decks like Assassins, Vynnset and the mirror via the discard effect to reduce token generation.
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Valiant Dynamo
Since Hala is all about swinging Zenith Blade twice as much as possible, Valiant Dynamo is a natural fit in our deck. A recursive piece of 1 armor is extremely powerful and has long been a staple in decks like Kassai, and Hala is nearly as efficient at maximizing them. These are easily our boots of choice outside of matchups where opponents present exclusively arcane damage. When playing with Valiant Dynamo, try to make sure you find an opportunity to defend with it for value every time you know you are going to swing twice on your turn to refresh it. If you know you won’t swing twice consider saving the point of defense for a future turn to potentially deny an on-hit.
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Grains of Bloodspill
In addition to being a premium piece of defensive equipment with Temper 2, Grains of Blood spill is also a great resource sink. Hala is a very resource hungry deck due to her hero ability costing an entire blue by itself and then usually wanting an additional 1 to pay for Zenith Blade. This leads us to playing 28 blues in our main deck and makes Grains incredibly powerful, as it offers us a way to convert extra resources into future value in the form of Vigor tokens. Sometimes this simply smooths out our curve, and other times if we have 2 Vigor tokens we can pay for both sword swings and get an entire extra card to use on offense or defense. We are okay defending with Grains of Bloodspill for the first time relatively early in the game, but generally want to wait to use the last defense for as long as possible, so we can play as much of the game as we can with access to this valuable resource sink.
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Reverent Rerebrace
These gloves have to compete with the classic Warrior staple Braveforge Bracers, but since Grains of Bloodspill is largely a preferrable resource sink, the value on Braveforge Bracers goes down a lot. Additionally, many of Hala’s premium threats like Swordmaster’s Shine, Drawn to the Blade, Edict of Steel (yellow and blue), and Beckon Steel care about how many times we have sharpened. Because of this, Rerebrace often ends up smoothing out a turn by spotting us the extra sharpen we need for our cards to fully function. For example, we can resolve both an Edict of Steel (yellow) and a Drawn to the Blade with both Flurry and draw a card effects being active with Rerebrace. Generally, we should look to save Rerebrace to enable these types of turns, or to push a little bit of extra damage when presenting lethal.
Reverent Rerebrace is the first non-Dynamo piece of equipment we chose to defend with, so we can use the effect on demand. If you haven’t yet used it and know you will on your turn, be sure to get your 2 value first!
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Crown of Providence
Our go-to head piece that not only offers 2 but can protect us from arsenal disruption, lets us replace a mediocre blue with a better card, or let us try to draw a new card to find a Flurry generator. The difference between Hala’s turns with and without Flurry are so high that this extra piece of card selection that starts in play is extremely valuable to her.
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Kabuto of Imperial Authority
Kabuto is incredibly powerful in Warrior mirrors, as it can deny an entire weapon swing and shut down many of the most powerful turns these decks can muster. Look for a good opportunity to use Kabuto when you think you can strand your opponent with extra cards or get a lot of extra value due preventing them from maximizing effects like multiple sharpens or Slice and Dice. Often being the second player to Kabuto is advantageous, but don’t be afraid to Kabuto first if you see a great opportunity for it.
Keep in mind that Olympia, despite being a Warrior, tends to only want to swing Golden Grail once! Kabuto is great into all Warriors except Olympia.
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Arsenal Priority
Hala is the kind of deck that is extremely efficient when she gets to enact her main gameplan but tends to play very mediocre turns if she doesn’t have a way to make use of the go again from sharpen. For example, without a Flurry, Brimming Blade offers a 2-card-5 value play that might make a Vigor with Grains of Bloodspill. If you add Toe the Line to this you get 2 damage prevention, 5 more damage, and a Dynamo reset for a 3-card-13vvalue play, which means the Toe the Line effectively improves the hand’s value by a whopping 8 points! This makes putting into your arsenal cards which play towards this gameplan extremely important for turn-to-turn consistency.
In practice, this means you should make sure to prioritize arsenals which generate Flurry tokens, like Toe the Line or Edict of Steel. Other effects like Olé and And Again… are a bit less efficient, but still very important. Finally, a 2-cost threat like Command and Conquer which can allow us to leverage the action point is also a fine arsenal. Ideally, we can keep putting cards into arsenal and cycling through these effects to make it so we almost never miss on Flurry. However, in some spots we may draw multiple hands without extra ways to spend our action points, and in these cases power cards like Swordmaster’s Shine, Beckon Steel, and Drawn to the Blade are our next best options.
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Power Turns
Any turn where Hala gets to sharpen, swing Zenith blade twice, and refresh Valiant Dynamo is going to have solid value, but with her new tools from Omens of the Third Age and Mastery Pack Warrior it really feels like she has some distinct power turns you can play towards as well. This makes her feel like a much more threatening deck to play against and has made her more dynamic.
Hala’s first power card we can play towards is Beckon Steel, which threatens a sharpen as well as an entire extra sword swing. Beckon Steel comes with some inherent risk in that the sword swing has to hit, so if it gets defended out you lose all the value. However, when we can line it up it often feels game winning. Keep in mind that while it is most efficient to use it on the first sword swing, so you get two attacks with the sharpen effect, using it on the second swing is only 1 point worse. The best ways to force Beckon Steel through are either by making the attack too large to defend with multiple sharpens and front pumps, or by having an attack reaction like Swordmaster’s Shine or Point of Escalation to help push it through. Additionally, we can leverage Cut n’ Carve (blue) to grant the attack go again, making it more challenging to defend against. Don’t be afraid to use Reverent Rerebrace to enable a Beckon Steel turn, this is one of the best uses of that equipment. Beckon Steel is generally a premium card to arsenal and resolve against aggressive decks basically as soon as we can sharpen enough times with a Flurry to enable it as they will struggle to defend it out. Where as against defensive decks it may be more of a setup card to line up with an additional attack reaction or dominate effect to guarantee it hits.
Drawn to the Blade is also a premium threat Hala gains access to in Mastery Pack Warrior. Not only does it provide 2 value when we swing twice, but it also gives us a card when we hit with either sword swing. This card usually threatens our opponent to fold almost the entire hand to stop it, or to allow the on-hit to give us excellent value. Drawn to the Blade is especially powerful into decks that do not defend well as even just two attacks for 5 may be impossible for them to defend against, but can also be strong against more defensive decks either to force the opponent on the backfoot or to gain great value when combined with attack reactions or evasion.
Finally, Swordmaster’s Shine is an incredibly potent threat when combined with 2 or more sharpen effects, as a 1/0-cost +5 attack reaction is way above rate. Swordmaster’s Shine pairs extremely nicely with our aforementioned power cards – Beckon Steel and Drawn to the Blade, but is also just a strong payoff in its own right.
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Grinding out Midrange and Fatigue
One of Hala’s greatest strengths is her excellent turn-over-turn value combined with very high deck damage. When Hala swings Zenith Blade twice it can be worth as much as 9 value if you use Hala’s hero ability and reset Valiant Dynamo without taking any cards out of deck, so long as we have a Flurry token. In many ways, these matchups are Hala’s bread and butter, as she has enough armor, plenty of 3 cards. and a good number of defense reactions to make her very hard to kill. She also threatens to deck damage the opponent if she doesn’t just overwhelm their defenses with her sheer aggression.
As is always the case with longer matchups, they can sometimes trend more towards value and more towards fatigue. In games that are trending towards deck damage and fatigue, the biggest key to playing these matchups is to make sure you maximize your Flurry generators. As much as possible, you should be trying to play only one per turn, pitch some to second cycle, and arsenal them to try and swing twice as consistently as possible. This, in combination with keeping your life total high by doing some defending and maximizing Valiant Dynamo, should put you in a very strong position in a long game.
If your opponent starts defending less and life totals are going down quicker than cards in deck, you should focus more on turn-to-turn value and playing for first cycle. Attack reactions like Swordmaster’s Shine and Point of Escalation are very good for forcing your opponent’s life totals down and putting them on the backfoot, while threats like Command and Conquer or Drawn to the Blade can steal tempo.
Regardless of which way the game is leaning, look for a good opportunity to set up a Beckon Steel turn. This often is easier to enable as their armor starts to get depleted but can also be played earlier in the game if you can combine it with an attack reaction or dominate effect. Beckon Steel is great both in terms of deck damage as well as just raw value, and resolving even just one of these can often put you in a very commanding position.
Slicing Up Aggro
Aggressive heroes like Oscilio, Constella Intelligence, Cindra, Dracai of Retribution, and Arakni, Marionette are best played by racing. Flurry generators are still key here, and swinging twice, accruing Valiant Dynamo, and leveraging armor and defense reactions to play defensively will still be our bread and butter on many turns. However, I think the most important card in these matchups is usually Beckon Steel, followed by Drawn to the Blade. These high value on-hits are some of the best ways we have to race and get ahead, and should be maximized as much as possible. Equipment is often best used to buy space for these turns.
In addition to racing and playing good value, we can leverage a bit of disruption to help keep our opponents from doing anything too powerful. Command and Conquer denies 5-card hands and we have additional on-hits in the form of Slice Up into decks that don’t want to play defense, The Weakest Link into Oscilio, and Blunten into Arakni, Marionette. Combining these disruptive pieces with our own powerful assertive turns are how we can keep up with the efficiency aggro decks tend to have.
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Sideboarding
This Hala deck features 52 main deck cards with 9 equipment and 19 sideboard cards. This section will discuss which cards are in the sideboard, what their use cases are, and how to sideboard into a few of the current meta decks, along with a few notes on how to approach the matchups.
Equipment
In the majority of matchups we present Crown of Providence, Grains of Bloodspill, Reverent Rerebrace, and Valiant Dynamos. Kabuto of Imperial Authority is reserved for Warrior mirrors, while Nullrune Hood is played into Vynnset. Arcane Barrier 3 is reserved for all-arcane Oscilio.
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Sideboard Cards
1x Big Blinder – Extra hand extender and source of Flurry generation. Can be a liability into Olympia, the wager is mostly free. Good for when we want to be assertive and don’t need defensive tools.
2x Showdown – Extra hand extender and source of Flurry generation, can be a liability into Olympia, the wager is mostly free. Good for when we want to be assertive and don’t need defensive tools.
3x Swordmaster’s Path – Hand extender that is good for when we want to be assertive. Excellent for helping push through effects like Drawn to the Blade and Beckon Steel.
3x Shelter from the Storm – Defensive tool for decks with on-hits or longer matchups where we want some extra life buffer. Has added utility into Arakni, Marionette and Cindra, Dracai of Retribution due to the prevention effects.
3x Sink Below – Defensive tool for decks with on-hits or longer matchups where we want some extra life buffer. Our first defense reaction of choice, as it helps us find Flurry generation quicker.
2x Slice Up – Good only into Cindra and attack action Oscilio, as they dislike defending.
2x The Weakest Link – Good into any version of Oscilio and Dash. Can also be played in midrange or defensive matchups when sideboarding up on cards, as it helps us use go again from Zenith Blade and trades up on cards.
3x Blunten – Targeted hate against Arakni, Marionette and Warrior mirrors.
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Sideboard Packages
Cindra
+3 Sink Below, +3 Shelter from the Storm, +2 Slice Up
Aim to stop Mask of Momentum while threatening good value and on-hits.
Oscilio (attacks)
No Arcane Barrier, +2 The Weakest Link, +2 Slice Up, +2 Showdown, +2 Swordmaster’s Path
Try to race and disrupt as much as possible. Beckon Steel and Drawn to the Blade are your best tools for racing.
Oscilio (arcane)
Nullrune Hood, Nullrune Robe, Nullrune Boots, +2 The Weakest Link, +3 Swordmaster’s Path, +2 Showdown, +1 Big Blinder
Try to race and present disruption with our 2-for-6’s. Beckon Steel and Drawn to the Blade are once again great racing tools. Look to Arcane Barrier with extra blues, but generally sending damage is better than defending, as a long game doesn’t favor us.
Oscilio (hedge – if you don’t know whether they are attacks or arcane)
Nullrune Hood, Nullrune Boots, + 2 The Weakest Link, +3 Swordmaster’s Path, +2 Showdown, +1 Big Blinder
This gives up quite a few points to Oscilio (attacks) as the lost equipment is quite impactful, but gives us a fighting chance against Oscilio (arcane).
Arakni
+3 Blunten, + 3 Shelter from the Storm, +3 Sink Below, -1 Point of Escalation
Beckon Steel is our best tool to pull ahead in this matchup. Toe the Line and Shelter from the Storm are great for stopping Hunter’s Klaive / Flick Knives. Try to avoid ending the turn on arsenal when you would be vulnerable to Inertia Trap – this means swinging Zenith Blade for 3 off a Vigor or playing Command and Conquer are our best ways to establish arsenals.
Warriors
Kabuto of Imperial Authority, +3 Shelter from the Storm, +3 Sink Below, +3 Swordmaster’s Path, +3 Blunten
Try to maximize Flurry tokens and play for a long game, switch to a value focus if life totals get low quickly or you get very far ahead. Showdown and Big Blinder can be quite dangerous in these matchups, The Weakest Link is a reasonable addition if you are worried about fatigue, but 64 cards offers a bit of extra threat density without diluting your deck too much.
Against Olympia play Crown of Providence instead of Kabuto of Imperial Authority.
Fatigue (e.g. Jarl, Betsy, Arakni, Huntsman)
+1 Big Blinder, +2 Showdown, +3 Sink Below, +3 Shelter from the Storm, +3 Swordmaster’s Path, +2 The Weakest Link, +3 Blunten
Maximize Flurry tokens and attack actions to use extra action points as much as possible. Blunten can help smooth out our resources or occasionally be used if they attack with weapon and try to establish an arsenal.
Gravy Bones
+2 Showdown, +1 Big Blinder, +3 Swordmaster’s Path, +2 The Weakest Link
Try to race and ignore allies besides Chum and Sawbones. Showdown, Big Blinder, Beckon Steel, and Drawn to the Blade are our best tools for answering allies.
Playing Against Hala
Even with the new tools, Hala still sometimes has some inherent inconsistency when she is forced to convert on offense should she draw all-red hands or hands without ways to swing twice or use her extra action point. As a result, finding places to play defense when your hand doesn’t convert well on offense and forcing Hala to convert again can be quite powerful. Just be careful not to do this too often, as given enough space she will either threaten to fatigue you or just set up a giant Beckon Steel turn that will put you way too far behind. These types of defensive pivots are best done opportunistically when you don’t have a better option available to you, and go up in value when she doesn’t have an arsenal to help improve her consistency on the following turn.
Additionally, if you can deny her Flurry you can again attack her consistency. This means looking for reasonable opportunities to defend cards like Showdown or even considering resolving Ripple Away’s discard effect to deny a second sword swing.
Metagame Position
Mastery Pack Warrior seems like it may be a sizable shakeup to the existing metagame with Hala, Olympia, and Kassai all initially seeming quite strong to me. Exactly where the metagame will settle has yet to be seen, but my initial impression is that Hala is overall actually quite very well rounded. With the ability to out-grind many of the defensive decks, and race the premiere aggro decks, Hala has a lot of strengths to lean on and seems like quite an attractive choice. Her main predator is in the form of Gravy Bones, as she struggles to efficiently clear allies while still threatening meaningful damage. Her best option here is simply to try and race and clear key threats like Chum with Beckon Steel or Drawn to the Blade to leverage his allies for on-hits.
to play out most of her turn (3 for Hala and 2 for Zenith Blade). However, playing more than 27-30 blues would often lead to too many all-blue hands which could cause her to struggle when opponents chose to defend out. As a result, she often settled on a slightly greedy resource base that would lead her to draw all-red hands that could be extremely punishing more often than we would like. However, with the additions of Drawn to the Blade and Point of Escalation, she now has additional yellow cards that play like reds when resolved, granting her a lot more stability in her resource curve. These cards also provide premium threats in second cycle, especially Point of Escalation, which can be a great way to set up a pitch stack to close the game or push through a Beckon Steel.
attack, but also has free go again on our first attack should we find a way to sharpen. While many of our main deck cards have sharpen, we also can use Hala’s hero ability to allow us to pay 3
armor is extremely powerful and has long been a staple in decks like Kassai, and Hala is nearly as efficient at maximizing them. These are easily our boots of choice outside of matchups where opponents present exclusively arcane damage. When playing with Valiant Dynamo, try to make sure you find an opportunity to defend with it for value every time you know you are going to swing twice on your turn to refresh it. If you know you won’t swing twice consider saving the point of defense for a future turn to potentially deny an on-hit.