Pro Draft Guide: Usurp the Shadow Throne

Usurp the Shadow Throne gives us a draft format as deep and explorable as all the layers of i’Arathael. Every available hero is Shadow, a talent that offers immense power, which you get to feel through the truly absurd turn cycles you can set up in this format. But the price of power is steep, and just as many players end up dying to blood debt as those who succeed at harnessing it.

Drafting this format can be daunting if you haven’t done it before. Whether you have an upcoming Calling, Pro Quest, Armory, or just possess some morbid curiosity, I am here to guide you through this format and help you avoid the pitfalls and traps, so you too can feel the strength that lies beyond the Gate. If you weren’t scared to jump in, it wouldn’t be on theme for the set, right?

This article is quite information-heavy, so you are welcome to engage with it at a pace which suits you. I’ll start by introducing the core concepts of the format and which Shadow cards to look out for early in the draft, then move onto hero-specific sections. Each of those sections will contain pick order lists of top cards, two draft archetypes to keep in mind, gameplay tips, sideboard advice, and a recipe for how to build a strong deck for the hero. This information can also apply to Sealed Deck format.

If you’d like to simplify things, just focus on a single hero chapter to start with, then return to this article when you have tried out that hero in a draft of your own. Or, if you just want to know everything there is to know about the set, you could unhinge your jaw and swallow the article whole!

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Heroes

Usurp the Shadow Throne follows the same pattern as a row of other great draft formats like Part the Mistveil, High Seas, and Omens of the Third Age. Three different classes with a shared talent, which makes the talent cards function as ‘Generics’ during the draft. This also means there is enough overlap in synergies between the heroes that you can pick Shadow cards early without committing to a hero.

Something new to this format is that each hero doesn’t just start with a basic weapon but also their own unique basic arms equipment, which helps their synergies come together. Rather than talking more about what they have in common, let’s take a look at what makes each of these heroes different!

Viserai, the Shadow Runeblade, is the main character of the set. He has this interesting mechanic of two sides to his hero card, which makes you undergo a quest during the game – create 3 Runechant tokens in a single turn, and Viserai, Between Worlds traverses (flips) into his Viserai, Usurper side, granting you free go again each turn. In the process, you also end up banishing Gloomblade attacks from the top of your deck, which can be played from the banished zone. Combine those free cards with the extra action point from his hero ability and his incredible weapon, Seven Sin Nebula, and you can pull off some truly disgusting value turns.

Viserai is an aggressive deck that wants to bury the opponent in damage, but has to balance Runechant generation, attacks from the banished zone, and cards that can put them there, all without running out of cards. He is not an easy hero to master, but it’s thrilling to engage in the puzzles he presents.

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Levia, the Shadow Brute, makes her return from Monarch! Her ability is the same, yet this time she has a completely different playstyle. She can access massive turns if her deck has enough 6+ attack action cards, but they come at the cost of banishing cards from your deck, growing your blood debt. The only way to avoid paying the toll is to keep banishing, burying you deeper and deeper.

In this set, compared to Monarch, she has access to Gate of i’Arathael tokens, which can pull your blood debt attacks out of your banished zone. She presents you with the challenge of restricting your impulses and being careful with your banished zone, while also letting you give in to the power if you have drafted a deck that can support it. You will often play a midrange game with good defense, big attacks, maybe a few carefully placed wide turns, and sometimes the ability to run your opponent out of cards.

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Malice is the new Shadow Necromancer, summoning zombies from both the graveyard and the banished zone. Her zombies require a lot of work to set up – they don’t defend, so first you have to get them into your graveyard, then play them with her hero ability, where your weapon will cause them to attack right away. They may not seem that powerful on the surface, but over the course of a few turns they will decay away and reveal the true prize: Corrupted Corpses. These ‘super-zombies’ can be played from your banished zone with the use of Gate to i’Arathael tokens. The go again on Corrupted Corpses makes it hard for the opponent to ignore them, as they can quickly get smothered by a horde of powerful attacks!

As a result, Malice is a bit slow to get going, but eventually reaches an endgame that nobody can beat, as you simply extract too much value from your zombie army. She requires some careful planning of how to get her engine started, and demands that your deck can both support enough allies, enough discard outlets, and enough Gate creation. She wants to play a patient game and defend well when she can, before taking over once her Corrupted Corpses have arrived!

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Gate to i’Arathael

All three heroes interact with the blood debt mechanic in one way or another. Just losing a single point of life may not seem that important, but it can absolutely ruin a game for you if you end up with multiple unwanted blood debt cards in your banished zone, slowly ticking down your life total, while your opponent just plays defensively and watches you bleed out.

Both Levia and Viserai end up banishing random cards throughout the game. Malice has more control over the cards from your deck that end up in the banished zone, but she can amass a small stack of blood debt when she starts creating Corrupted Corpses if she is not ready to move them out of there.

The main way you manage blood debt is by getting the cards out of your banished zone. The set has a few mechanics to do this, but the primary way is Gate to i’Arathael tokens. These Gates are premium, as they not only let a blood debt card exit your banished zone, they also essentially give you an extra card, letting you use your banished zone as an extended hand. Pairing a Gate with a 2-cost attack is especially fruitful, lining up with a single blue pitch to access a strong attack off one card.

During the draft, pay attention to the cards that can give you Gates at good rates. There won’t be many of them, and the rest of the table will fight over them too. You should also keep in mind that Gates are not just powerful by themselves – cards don’t enter your banished zone for free, and if you want to get the advantage, you need to pair your Gates with effects that put cards in your banished zone for value. There is such a thing as ending up with too many Gates if you don’t have outlets for them.
This dynamic can also come up during games when you have the choice to prevent your opponent from making Gates by defending out certain on-hit effects like Corporeal Chasm, Breach Flesh, or Step through Realms. You should generally respect your opponent’s ability to make Gates, especially early in the game, but the Gates can quickly reach a point of diminishing returns if they already have multiple and no visible outlets to use them.

Gates are important and you want to prioritize them, but you need to consider the context as well and know that Gates are useless without cards in the banished zone. Conversely, if you never engage in Gate generation and playing cards from the banished zone, you won’t get to access the same level of power that your opponents get. This format is all about balance, and getting the ratios right is even more important here than in other draft formats.

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Blood Debt

Aside from Gates, each hero also has their own way to circumvent blood debt. Only Levia can turn it off completely, but whenever she does this, she also increases the amount of blood debt cards in her banished zone. This makes it a dangerous game to overly rely on her hero ability, as most of the ways to put a 6 card in your banished zone involves a random banish, so you can’t control when it works and when it doesn’t.

Viserai’s Shadow Runeblade attacks can all be played from the banished zone, which is an easy way to exit blood debt. But the main way he gets them into the banished zone in the first place is with the random banishing from his hero ability, which could also hit other cards with blood debt that you can’t play without a Gate.

For both Levia and Viserai, this random banishing introduces a real risk, especially with blue blood debt cards. In general, you want the majority of your blue cards to have 3, but most of the 3 cards in this set also have blood debt. So any banish from the top of your deck could reveal a blood debt blue that is too weak for you to really want to spend a turn and a Gate to get out. But if you don’t, it will just sit there and drain your life every turn.

This is where this cycle of equipment comes in to save you!

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These are not as unassuming as they seem, even though you may go through an entire game without needing to use one, which actually happens fairly often. But when you need to get rid of a pesky blood debt card and find yourself without any of these, the cost can be immense, racking up life loss turn after turn. You don’t need many of them, and you don’t need to prioritize them highly during the draft, as you’ll see a lot of them. Note that this cycle only has three equipment, as each hero already has their arms slot accounted for.

Another niche application of the Repentance equipment is that they can protect you from an opponent trying to use Planar Chaos to steal a card from your banished zone – if you turn the target face-down in response, the opponent will just have wasted their Gate and their card!

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It’s worth noting that blood debt is not just a negative keyword for no reason. Accessing cards from outside your hand is a great strength, and you don’t have to use a Repentance equipment to turn any blood debt card face-down as soon as you’re about to lose a life from it. Whenever you turn the card face-down, you also forgo the strength that comes with playing it from the banished zone on a later turn.

Knowing when to strategically lose life from blood debt is an important skill when navigating this format. For example, Viserai can save up a few Gloomblades in the banished zone to have more turns where he gets to swing his weapon. Levia may want to leave a Shadowrealm Harvester face up in the banished zone even though she has no Gates, because there’s still a Dam the Shadowake left in the deck that hasn’t been drawn, which means a Gate is coming up very soon. Malice can lose life from a Corrupted Corpse to set up a turn where she plays two Corrupted Corpses at once, making it more difficult for the opponent to clear them.

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Choosing to lose life to set up powerful future turns is a play you have to be careful with. The life loss is cumulative. For example, if you have three Gloomblades in your banished zone, and you want to play out one each turn to follow up with a sword swing, then you’ll be giving up 6 over the course of the next three turns. Whereas if you turn one card face-down, you’ll only lose 3. It may still be well worth it to pay 3 for that third sword attack (mostly just to avoid fatigue), but it has to be a conscious decision to pay that life.

You also need to account for this extra life loss when you calculate the upside of leaving the card in the banished zone. Paying 1 now to get a free card next turn is typically a strong move. Paying 1 three times to get a free card three turns from now is probably not worth it, as 3 is what you would get from defending with a card. In the same way, going for a play that gives you +2 value now but leaves you with a blood debt card that is going to drain your life over the next many turns, might not be that good of an idea.

Make sure that the life you lose from blood debt is not just something that happens at the end of some turns, but it’s something that you have been carefully managing to access the upside of playing extra cards out of your banished zone!

Drafting the Set

Quick Hits

• You can pick more Shadow cards early compared to other sets, as they often defend for 3 and work in any hero.

• Unconditional Gate creation is premium.

• Look out for ways to get go again, as it can help extend turns when needed.

• Pick Dark Arcanite equipment very highly, except arms. Do not pick Repentance equipment that highly, but getting one late pack 1 can be nice.

Usurp the Shadow Throne has a peculiar dynamic unlike any of its former shared talent draft formats. Usually, the class commons have a higher concentration of 3 cards, and the shared talent commons have a higher concentration of 2 cards. Normally, this leads to a dynamic where you can pick talent cards that go in all three heroes, but the longer you stay open, the fewer 3 cards will end up in your final deck.

Here, you can be perfectly happy to just pick Shadow cards for most of the first 8 picks and still end up with all 3 cards. The cost you end up paying in this set is that you might not be able to go as hard on class-specific synergies, or that you will end up filling up your deck with unwanted blood debt blues compared to more powerful class-specific blues.

For Viserai and Levia, you will still end up with plenty of 3 cards if you just draft by picking Shadow Runeblade or Shadow Brute cards and never look back, as most of their class cards defend for 3. But in Malice you will feel this difference the most, as the majority of Necromancer cards in the set do not defend very well, and you are typically better off drafting regular Shadow cards for defense in your deck.

What this all means is that while you can speculate on particularly powerful class cards you see in your packs (or if you have just decided to force a hero from the start), it’s also totally fine to pick up good Shadow and Generic cards for the first few, if nothing else of interest is being passed to you.

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Shadow / Generic Top Picks

The following are the Shadow and Generic commons and rares you should be first-picking out of your packs, in rough order of how high I’d pick them. The only cards I’d pick over these are specific powerful class rares and majestics, but only about half of the majestics are even first-pick worthy compared to these cards!

• Dam the Shadowake (red)

• Dark Arcanite equipment (except arms)

• Dam the Shadowake (yellow)

• Battle Prep (red)

• Countdown to Extinction (red)

• Dam the Shadowake (blue)

• Shadowrealm Bloodhound (red)

• Corporeal Chasm (red)

You can’t talk about the best Shadow cards without talking about Dam the Shadowake. I’ve already highlighted just how important Gate creation is, but getting to do it at such an efficient rate, getting your Gate on top of your 4 value. It’s so good that even the blue and yellow versions are also among the top picks! Pick these cards when you see them early on, and only change from that once you are late in the draft and know that you have more Gate generation than your deck can support.

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Even though Usurp the Shadow Throne has a lot of crazy things going on, it is still Flesh and Blood limited, and cards that would normally be great are still great here. One example of this is the classic 3-cost big attacks that just let you play some efficient turn cycles of defending with two cards and spending two on offense, without much effort. Corporeal Chasm gets to threaten a Gate at a breakpoint, but even better is Countdown to Extinction, which guarantees the Gate. The on-hit is not that relevant, because even though you are getting a free card to play with a Gate, you also lose 1 in the process, then spend a blue card and a Gate to get +4 next turn. It averages out to be the same value as just not searching your deck and instead just defending for 3 with that blue card on the following turn. Still, the guaranteed Gate means I’m also totally happy playing the yellow version of this card if I have to, and attacking with the blue one is also not that bad.

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Another example of cards that are just regularly good are efficient go again effects that defend for 3, which are just always premium. They let you play defensively when you need to, but can also help extend damage when your opponent doesn’t send much damage into you. The opt on Battle Prep is incredible for the format, letting you control the random banish effects for Levia and Viserai, though you pretty much always want to make sure you can put this in arsenal and play it out the following turn for the full value.

Shadowrealm Bloodhound may seem like you’d be paying too steep a cost for go again, but the main way to use this card is to pair it with a Gate and a 0-for-4 Shadow attack like Breach Flesh, so that you get to pitch a blue, attack for 6 with Shadowrealm Bloodhound, banish your attack, then use a Gate to send the attack you banished. It’s a modest 3-card-10, but having the option to use your cards to push for offense is always nice if they defend for 3 anyway. The even better combo is with Ghostly Visit, where you get to do the same play but without needing a Gate. You can also just play Shadowrealm Bloodhound without go again as a fine turn, and this flexibility is what makes the card so premium for me.

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Other Picks

These cards are not as premium as the ones from the first list, and you can consider picking good class cards over them while moving towards an archetype. Still, they are quite reasonable to pick up in the first 4-ish picks if you want to stay open!

• Shadowrealm Reaper

• Darkest Hour (red)

• Step through Realms (red)

• Permanent Internment (red)

• Rally the Shadow Horde (red)

• Whispers Within (red)

• Rites of Nightfall

Darkest Hour and Step through Realms are both nice ways to help you extend turns and enable you to play more than just two cards on offense. Step through Realms doubles as a potential Gate generator, although it pays a steep price being a 2, meaning I’m not particularly interested in the yellow and blue versions.
Darkest Hour is less valuable (as it doesn’t threaten a Gate), but being 3 is a huge upside, and makes me like this card in all colors. The ability to pay for it by putting a card on top both makes it more reliable to play, but can also set up the top of your deck for banishes in Viserai and Levia. Even in Malice, 2-cost go again effects fit so well with her 1-cost hero power. Don’t sleep on these cards!

Shadowrealm Reaper is a card that also falls into the category of go again and 3, but it does have an extra condition for the go again. First, you need to get it into the banished zone, then you also need to use a Gate. When you do fulfill these conditions, it’s going to be an amazing card, and it fits well into a Levia deck or a Gate-heavy Viserai deck where you have the chance to banish it off the top. It also works particularly well with Shadowrealm Walker, which even spots the Gate for you.

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The Shadow card pool has three different 0-for-4’s and they’re all worth noting. Breach Flesh and Shadowrealm Walker have already been mentioned, but I think the best of them is Permanent Internment – or Permanent Internet as we nicknamed it at the World Premiere! It won’t be easy to pay into this ability, as you will require Shadow cards in your banished zone, but both Levia and Viserai will be banishing random cards, and this can be your way out of taking blood debt from unwanted blues. Note that it can turn any Shadow card face-down, even those that don’t have blood debt.

It’s especially nice when you end up with fewer Repentance equipment than you’d like. In more aggressive Levia builds you won’t have trouble putting three blood debt cards into your banished zone, at which point Permanent Internment becomes another clean 3-for-7!

Even in Malice, who will rarely fill up her banished zone, you are still very happy to play any 0-for-4. Permanent Internment is worse than the other two in Malice because it’s mostly vanilla, but early in the draft before I know my lane, I’ll be picking it higher than the others because of how well it fits into any hero.

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Again, this format is still regular Flesh and Blood, and 3-for-7’s are always good. Rally the Shadow Horde and Whispers Within are significantly worse due to having 2, but they have some niche applications when defending. Rally the Shadow Horde can fuel Viserai’s banished zone to enable his weapon, and Whispers Within can ensure Levia hits a 6 card off the top to enable her synergies, but by and large, these are still meant to be attackers rather than defenders. They do a fine job, but exist in the territory where good class commons become better picks over picks to stay open.

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Then we have a collection of blue cards: Rites of Nightfall, Dimenxxional Ferryman, Pull from Beyond, and Battle Prep, which are included here because they have a unique property – they are the only Shadow and Generic 3 blues without blood debt. In general, picking up 3 blues after the first 4 picks of the draft is totally reasonable, as any deck would want them and the Shadow card pool has no shortage of them, so they are often available at this stage.

The reason it matters so much that they don’t have blood debt is because when you end up banishing them randomly, they don’t become a problem and require you to spend a Repentance equipment or inefficiently use a Gate just to get them out. This matters in Levia and Viserai, but even though Malice doesn’t banish cards at random, she still demands a high quantity of blue 3 cards, and she would be quite pleased if you took one of these at pick 6 of the draft.

Even though you don’t want to spend a full card to get a Gate, Rites of Nightfall does so at such a low opportunity cost that it can be nice to have when you get stuck with a full hand, or to have access to a Gate once you reach second cycle near the end of the game. Dimenxxional Ferryman is an odd card, but does have a big advantage in that you will go up on cards in deck when you use it. It’s a hefty cost to use a full card from your hand every time you want to do this, but it can be nice to have as a way to be slightly more competitive in fatigue battles, or to combo with Fallen Herald!

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Equipment

This set is particularly low on equipment, to allow more mental capacity to be spent on managing the banished zone. You still see 1 per pack as usual, but we only get two different cycles, so the selection is much slimmer. Dark Arcanite equipment are quite high picks as a result. There’s not much competition, and having extra ways to stop breakpoints and keep your life total higher is just so premium. You’ll be taking these out of most packs where you see them, barring a few particularly great cards.

Mostly, you are just supposed to use these like regular Blade Break equipment, waiting to defend with them until an opportunity presents itself where you can use them to stop an on-hit effect. There is one thing to keep in mind though, which is that you may want to cash these in for life when you get very low, because while they can stop any type of damage from your opponent, they do not prevent life loss from blood debt. If you end up going down to 1 with a Dark Arcanite equipment still around, you won’t be able to strategically lose life from blood debt later.

Dark Arcanite Gloves exists in a weird spot where it is completely different from its three counterparts of the cycle, since it would be replacing the arms equipment you get for free, which are generally just better. For that reason, you will see Dark Arcanite Gloves going around the table until last pick. There is one exception, and that’s for fatigue Levia decks where you want to run this over Hex Gauntlet against Viserai and the mirror. It is actually quite valuable in these particular decks, so while you can still let the card go late, consider picking it up when you see it on the wheel.

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The Repentance equipment do not have an arms slot, and are generally prioritized much lower than the Dark Arcanite equipment. The main reason is that while you’d be happy to have all three Dark Arcanite slots filled up, the same cannot be said for the Repentance equipment. Levia is fine running two of these, but Viserai and especially Malice would not want more than one. So there is plenty to go around and they are not that important.

The first piece of Repentance equipment is quite good, as it can act as insurance. I like to pick up one of these during pack 1 when you’re at around pick 7-9 and the other options are unexciting. Once you have a Repentance equipment, you don’t need to worry about having too many blood debt blues, you don’t have to be as careful about making more Corrupted Corpses in your Malice deck than you can necessarily pay for, etc. Typically though, I’d rather pick any random 3 blue over a Repentance equipment, so when I say that the alternatives in the pack have to be unexciting, I really mean it. If the Repentance equipment gets picked earlier in your pod, I don’t think they’re worth fighting over, as you can always still pick up one in pack 2 or 3.

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Viserai

Quick Hits

• You can produce a lot of high value turn cycles, but can also easily be fatigued if you’re not careful.

• There are many demands on your deck composition, so any card that fulfils multiple roles becomes more valuable.

• Look out for additional ways to banish cards, so you can get more turn cycles where you attack with Seven Sin Nebula.

• Play about half as many “Sinchants” as you have usurp cards.

• If you don’t have many Gloomblade attacks, you can build a Shadow-heavy version based around Gates to play things from the banished zone.

• Try to avoid leaving Runechants around in the mirror to get usurped by the opponent’s cards.

Viserai at his best sends obscene amounts of damage every turn while still defending, breaking the bank for what would be a reasonable amount of value. His base play pattern is fairly simple – traverse as early as possible, then stay in Usurper form and reap the benefits of getting to send multiple Shadow attacks in a turn for powerful turn cycles. You even get a few banishes off the top which will hopefully grant you extra Gloomblade attacks and let you attack with your weapon, while defending and playing very small hands.

The catch? If you are not careful and your opponent plays defensively enough, you’re always at the risk of fatigue. Since you end up banishing some cards that you can’t play from the banished zone, you’re essentially starting every game down on cards in deck. You also use cards sometimes to just make a single Runechant, which is not converting for very much damage, and even though your weapon is great, you will quickly end up without the ability to swing it. If you’re not careful, the opponent may have kept themselves alive long enough to witness a turn where you just have to send two non-usurped Gloomblade attacks, and those are not hard to defend against.

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The other catch? Viserai has very strict demands for his deck building composition. You want to traverse early, which means you need to run enough cards that make Runechants. You also want enough cards that can be played from your banished zone, and some ways to banish them to enable the weapon. You want a few ways to make Gates and then enough blues to support all of this. The total recipe looks something like this:

• 10-12 Runechant makers

• 10-12 attacks you can play from the banished zone

• 4-6 ways to banish cards

• 2-4 Gate makers

• 10-12 blues

Rounding out with a couple cards that are just big attacks and you have yourself a basket with way more ingredients than you can fit into your stew pot. The way we deal with this is by having cards that fulfill more than one of these roles (more on that in the next section).

It may not be obvious why you would need cards in your deck that specifically put stuff into your banished zone. After all, your hero ability already does that!

After you have traversed though, you’ll typically have a few turns where you get to enjoy your free cards from the banished zone, but once you run out you no longer have access to weapon swings. And since you generally want to stay as Usurper for as long as possible, you will need cards that efficiently banish attacks from your hand in order to enable your weapon. After all, attacks like Void Wraith do not care if they’re played from your hand or from the banished zone, but Seven Sin Nebula cares.

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Top Runeblade Picks

These are cards that you can pick up when you see them and there are no great Shadow cards left, leading you towards Viserai. The exact order is uncertain at this point, but this is roughly the order of power level. All of these are great cards for the hero.

• Murmuring Gloomblade (red)

• Runechant of Lust

• Shadowrealm Ripper (red)

• Embrace Ursur (red)

• Cullingsong Gloomblade

• Bloodsong Gloomblade

• Plundersong Gloomblade

• Murmuring Gloomblade (blue)

• Vexing Gloomblade (red)

• Otherworldly Sin (red)

Note that at this point, there are no Runeblade cards I’d pick over the top Shadow or Generic cards early in a pack, but that can of course change once you know you’re drafting Viserai, as these cards will lead your deck to be more synergistic.

Runechant of Lust is part of a cycle of seven deadly sin instants (I will differentiate them from regular Runechant tokens by calling them “Sinchants”). I’ll cover the other common ones later, but Runechant of Lust deserved special mention, as it is so much better than its counterparts that it may even be the very best common / rare for Viserai!

The reason is how easily it enables you to to traverse. No other card in the set makes 2 guaranteed Runechants in two separate instances, as each Runechant is created by their own trigger, and they will also each trigger Between World’s ability to banish the top card of your deck. Remember that playing a Runechant does not count towards the 3 you need to traverse, as the hero ability specifies creating Runechants, which refers specifically to the tokens. But combining Runechant of Lust with Grasp of the Darknight and any usurp attack will immediately flip you into Usurper – and if your attack was a Gloomblade with blood debt, it will also get go again!

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Murmuring Gloomblade is just incredible. This is the type of card I’m talking about when I say that you need cards that fill multiple roles. It’s both something you can hit off the top to play from the banished zone as an additional card, but it also creates Runechants and can help you traverse!

A play you might be thinking about on one of the first turns is to use Grasp of the Darknight, to make your first Runechant, then send Murmuring Gloomblade, making a second Runechant and demanding it be defended. The reason this play pattern isn’t great, is that your opponent will always just defend it, and that leaves you without your arms, making it more difficult to traverse on future turns. Instead, combining it with Otherworldly Sins is a brutal sequence that demands the opponent to defend for 9, and even if they do, you’ll still have banished two cards from your deck that can aid in a future turn.

It’s also an excellent card to have hit off the top on the turn that you end up traversing. Simply pay the blood debt and leave it there, because on any future turn where the opponent tries to deal you damage, you can defend with a couple of cards and pitch a blue to send Murmuring Gloomblade with go again into a weapon swing. This is a 1-card-8, even without usurping, with two on-hits that threaten another Runechant!

Being great in all stages of the game is what makes this card so premium. You can happily play yellow copies of this card too, and the blue one is also exceptional for a different reason – it fulfills three different roles at once, being a Runechant maker, a card you’re happy to play from the banished zone, and a blue card. Do not sleep on this card, Viserai wants lots of copies.

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The three rare 0-cost attacks all have quite powerful on-hit abilities. They are quite below rate if you don’t manage to usurp them, but if you do, they come in at a breakpoint which can be difficult to stop in draft, especially if there are not many Dark Arcanite equipment around. I consider these to be good cards, but not quite bombs. They each have a fail state – when the opponent doesn’t have a Gate, when they don’t have an arsenal, and when they have a card in hand they’re happy to banish (for example, their own Gloomblade).

Costing 0 can be nice in some turns, but when playing these from the banished zone and then following up with a weapon swing, you’d be wasting up to 2, so they don’t work nearly as well as Murmuring Gloomblade or the other 2-cost attacks you can play from the banished zone. Since they also don’t help you get online (in fact, they put even more pressure on your ability to create Runechants to feed them!), I think you’re better off picking the best enablers over these early in the draft.

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Shadowrealm Ripper isn’t a Runeblade card, but it’s so good in Viserai compared to the other two heroes that I decided to include it in this list. It’s one of the most efficient ways to fuel your banished zone, and has a unique property as an efficient 1-cost Shadow attack. The fact that it’s also just a fine 3 in the other heroes is only a small part of the reason why it’s such a high pick.

Embrace Ursur is another one of the dual-role cards, as it both creates a Runechant and can banish cards once you’re flipped. It does have a restriction in that it needs you to have a Gloomblade in hand for the card to function. You need to banish a card that’s both Shadow and Runeblade, and that card also has to be playable from the banished zone, which is basically just Gloomblades. When it works, it can be incredible for setting you up pre-traverse, and fueling some nice turns post-traverse.

Both of these cards have specific combos for when you’re Usurper. Once you have a couple of these, you also want to be on the lookout for the cards that combine well with them.

Shadowrealm Ripper combines perfectly with any 1-cost go again you can play from the banished zone, like Bloodfrenzy Gloomblade. When you pitch a blue, attack for 7 with Shadowrealm Ripper, banishing Bloodfrenzy Gloomblade, then follow up with the Bloodfrenzy Gloomblade from the banished zone, you’re sending a 3-card-10 that the opponent has to defend fully, otherwise Bloodfrenzy Gloomblade gets go again and enables Seven Sin Nebula to attack too!

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Enshrine Sin (red) and Abyssal Bite also work with this curve, essentially a 3-card-11.

Embrace Ursur can give itself go again and does not have blood debt, so it doesn’t eat up the go again from Usurper. Combining it with the 0-cost Gloomblades like Demonbound Gloomblade is a beautiful symbiosis, letting you attack for 3, then 5, then 3 again with the sword, only costing you 2. You can also use Bloodfrenzy Gloomblade or Ghostly Visit for another neat 3-card-11 off a blue.

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Sinchants

Dubbed “Sinchants” by the community, this cycle of instants often ends up being quite important to enable usurp-heavy Viserai decks. They also come with a significant downside, being yellow cards that don’t defend and only result in a single point of value when not usurped.

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The three main ones I want to talk about are Runechant of Lust, Runechant of Pride, and Runechant of Envy – the ones that give you an additional numeric point of value when usurped. Typically, when you usurp a Runechant token, you’re only gaining 1 point of value. You get +2 on your attack, but you lose 1 arcane damage from the Runechant itself. When you usurp a Sinchant, you do have to spend a full card, but your Gloomblade attack becomes above rate, you get 1 point of value (i.e. +1, +1, 1 Runechant token) and another Runechant token for an extra point, making these worth 3 value at instant speed, totally fine playables. They also have some additional upside when drawn on turn 0, as they will pop at the start of your turn 1, giving you your first Runechant and making it much more trivial to traverse early.

Running too many usurp cards without enough Sinchants to support them means that you will often have to play them as underpowered attacks from your hand. Running too many Sinchants without enough usurp cards means that you sometimes just find yourself with what are essentially Cracked Baubles in your hand. The sweet spot is to run about half as many Sinchants as you have usurp attacks, to a maximum of five.

Avoiding Fatigue

Getting fatigued is Viserai’s biggest concern, and it’s relevant against both Malice and Levia. There are a few rules to keep in mind to avoid such a dire fate:

• Don’t throw away too much value to traverse – You don’t necessarily need to traverse as early as possible. Playing one or two efficient turns where you make a Runechant or two will keep your banished zone fed for future sword swings and make your traverse turn another high efficiency damage output turn.

• Lose life from blood debt – You should be fine giving up some life if your opponent is trying to fatigue you. Having cards in the banished zone also means that you get to defend very well while still sending good attacks off small hands, which saves you life anyway.

• Attack with your sword as much as possible – While sending two attacks from your banished zone can be very satisfying, you may want to pace them among two different turns, ending on a sword attack each time for maximum deck damage.

• Take a turn to traverse back again – Once you’ve spent the bonus cards from your banished zone, you may want to flip back to Between Worlds to refuel. You need to have created or activated a Gate to do this, and you also need to make sure that you can still flip back to Usurper as soon as possible, as your sword is not worth much if you can’t enable it.

• Overpower – There are a few overpower attacks in the Shadow card pool that can help close out games.

• Kill with Runechants – Having Runechant makers in your blue base is not only nice for filling up your deck slots and traversing early more consistently, but also helps finish off a game if the opponent’s life total is low. Remember that there is no way to prevent arcane damage in the set (outside of Dark Arcanite equipment, a few Necromancer cards, and a few majestics), so Runechants count as true damage.

Shadowpilled Viserai

The deck I’ve described so far is the standardized way of drafting Viserai. But if you’re competing with a neighbor for Runeblade cards, you may struggle to get enough Gloomblades, Runechant makers, etc.

You can still do very similar things by drafting a Viserai deck that has less Runeblade cards and more Shadow cards. The main way to benefit from this style is to “build your own Gloomblades” by using Gates to play regular blood debt cards from your banished zone. The big advantage of playing this way is that you get to fill your deck with quality, on-rate Shadow attacks that benefit greatly from the free go again. You also don’t have to mingle with the inconsistencies of Sinchants, as you’ll run very few of them. The main disadvantages of this style is that you have more pressure on your Gate generation, and you still need enough Runechant generation to consistently traverse early. You also don’t get to make good use of Embrace Ursur without many Gloomblades in your list, so Otherworldly Sins, even in yellow, becomes a hot commodity.

You can make more Gates and also fuel your banished zone for Seven Sin Nebula by running Shadowrealm Walker and Darkest Hour. Countdown to Extinction matches up particularly nicely, granting a Gate and threatening to put a Darkest Hour in the banished zone, which is an actual upside in Viserai, since it plays so nicely with the sword.

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The Viserai Mirror

Playing the mirror requires a completely different mindset to playing against decks that try to fatigue you. It’s possible you can construct some Viserai decks that can successfully fatigue the mirror, but most of the time it’s all about traversing as early as possible and keeping up the pressure.

There is also a quite interesting dynamic with usurp cards, as you can use them on your opponent’s Runechants. This means that ending your turn with a Runechant in play is a vulnerable position. Normally, generating a Runechant token off your last attack for the turn would be +1 value, but in the mirror it’s -1 value on average.

• Sometimes they get to usurp your Runechant and keep their own, essentially gaining +1 value because they’re up a Runechant.

• Sometimes they don’t have a Runechant themselves, and usurping yours nets a full +2 value.

• Sometimes they don’t have a usurp card, or they have a Sinchant that they’d rather destroy instead, netting them no additional value.

If all scenarios happen roughly equally often, that averages out to the opponent being up 1 point of value if you leave them with a Runechant to usurp. This means Seven Sin Nebula is much weaker in the mirror, as it can be a reasonable line to take the hit and abuse the Runechant it generates. Similarly, Murmuring Gloomblade is much better once it has go again, so you can immediately follow up with a second attack and cash in that Runechant right away.

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Levia

Quick Hits

• Needs lots of 6 cards, often relying on yellows.

• You don’t want to banish cards every turn, as you won’t be able to control blood debt.

• The advantage of banishing cards from deck is getting strong targets for Gates.

• Can be drafted as fatigue or aggro.

• Needs attacks with overpower against Malice.

At her best, Levia sends one good attack every turn while defending really well. Sometimes she even sends 6 or 7 off a single card with the use of a Gate, and typically she can have massive turns using go again attacks.

She also plays quite fair, and can succumb to opponents who do significantly better numbers. She’s also not very good at clearing zombies, and if you are not careful with your banished zone it’s very easy to find yourself losing 8+ from blood debt in a game.

Her basic goal is to draft lots of 3 cards, solid attacks, and try not to play too many cards that banish a random card off the top. Yes, you get rewarded whenever you hit a 6, but you can mostly never guarantee this, and a big banished zone is just a ticking time bomb.

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Instead, pick your spots to play cards that banish off the top carefully. Gorging Shadowbeast is a good attack, but if you hit a blood debt blue you need to be ready with a Repentance equipment. Conversely, if you hit a big red attack, then you have a nice outlet for a Gate and you don’t even need to give up life to keep it around!

If you send an attack like Gorging Shadowbeast every turn though, your deck better be ready for it, because you will eventually run out of Repentance equipment and Gates.

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There is some concern about blues in Levia. They are mostly not 6 attacks, and they often have blood debt, so you don’t want to hit them off the top. Many of your cards get better if there is a good 6 on top, so if you keep pitching blues every turn, you will reach an endgame where none of your cards work.

For this reason, we can employ the oldest Brute trick in the book – use yellow 6‘s as part of your resource base to artificially increase your 6 density. There are more aggressive versions that take this to the extreme and play a low blue count to make sure that they can more reliably hit a 6 off the top, and then there are the more defensive, fatigue versions that want to play just a few yellow 6‘s for their endgame.

Once you have pitched a yellow 6, it’s a great time to practice pitch stacking!

All you need to do is keep track of that one card, so you can plan around when it’s coming up on top. Pick up your deck and count the number of cards to figure out how many hands of 4 cards it will take to reach your pitched card. You can also keep count of how many cards you’ve pitched after it in order to not lose track. You do need the card to line up and be at the top, so it needs to be in spot number 5, 9, 13, etc. from the top of your deck. Luckily, your cards have an inbuilt mechanic that can manipulate this number, banishing the top card to make the count fit!

Now that you know you have a guaranteed hit in your deck, cards like Headstrong Stampede and Feeding Frenzy become much more reliable, so you can arsenal one of these and wait for the turn where you get to cash in on your foresightfulness.

A great line is to set up Feeding Frenzy in arsenal and make a Gate, knowing that you have Corporeal Chasm (yellow) coming up. Then once you know it’s on top, defend with two cards, leaving two blues in hand. Then you send the Feeding Frenzy, banish Corporeal Chasm, then play the Corporeal Chasm from your banished zone with the Gate, for a nice 3-card-12. Having turns like this in the endgame is so powerful. Levia benefits greatly from getting to second cycle, so make sure to defend well so that you are healthy once you reach these spots, and can play your power turns with no fear of random outcomes.

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Levia also has a special love for 2-cost attacks. They are much nicer to play with a Gate compared to 3-cost attacks (which would require an extra card to pitch), and they enable you to cleanly pitch a yellow. It’s not that big of a deal if you do need to overpitch, as Levia loves pitching red attacks when she gets the space, but make sure to include a good amount of 2-cost attacks alongside your bread and butter 3-costs.

Top Brute Picks

This is a list of the Brute / Shadow Brute cards you should be looking out for to move you into Levia. Note that there is quite a jump in power levels for these cards specifically. Hellbound Assault is a card I’d pick over any other Shadow / Generic common / rare, and Feeding Frenzy is about on par with the other high pick Shadow / Generic cards. The rest of these cards are on a steep decline and I only start considering them when the alternative would be a Shadow 3 blue, unless I’ve already picked another incentive to be Levia.

After this list, you can pick up more good red attacks, and 6 3 yellows. You can never get enough of those in your Levia deck.

Very, very good:

• Hellbound Assault (red)

Very good:

• Feeding Frenzy (red)

Good:

• Hellbound Assault (yellow)

• Rise to the Challenge (red)

• Feasting Shadowbeast (red)

• Beckoning Hunger (red)

• Peak Power (red)

• Gorging Shadowbeast (yellow)

Hellbound Assault is such an incredible card, a 2-cost 7 that does not banish a random card, and has a great on-hit effect. The reason the on-hit is so good isn’t because it can alleviate you from taking blood debt – after all, if you have five blood debt cards in the banished zone, your opponent would happily spend three cards to defend this – it’s because this statline is the perfect target for a Gate, so hitting with this means you get a guaranteed strong Gate target in the banished zone! If you have enough Gates, sooner or later the opponent will have to respect this, because you can get so much value from hitting with it.

The yellow version does not have a breakpoint, so it won’t be so easy to hit, but instead it has all the upsides of a yellow 6, while still being a great card to hit off a random banish to spend a Gate on. Gorging Shadowbeast (yellow) shares the same statline and ends up being another great card as a result, though banishing a card off the top may be a downside.

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3-cost 7 attacks are always premium, but Beckoning Hunger has a bit more texture to it. As always, any attack action you send that banishes off the top has that inherent downside that they need to be supported by a Gate or a Repentance equipment so you can keep your banished zone nice and empty and free of blood debt. The on-hit ability is also hard to evaluate, as sometimes you won’t hit a blood debt card off the top and then the opponent can simply take the damage, as Blasmophet will then die at the end of your turn.

The upside is great though, when you hit a 2-cost attack while having a Gate the opponent needs to fully defend this attack, and you’ve still obtained value for a future turn. All of this is to say, the card is good, but because it’s also a 3-cost, it holds some hidden downsides and you should not overestimate it.

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Blasmophet, the Insatiable Hunger

This token is not easy to summon, and it can be hard to evaluate exactly how to best utilize it. Most games simply end up not being about Blasmophet and that’s okay, but you can keep your eyes open for the occasion where you get to leverage it.

The main thing to keep in mind is that you need to banish a blood debt card every turn, both yours and your opponent’s, to keep it around. While you can just banish an attack from your hand, then use Blasmophet to play out that attack from your banished zone next turn, you’re not really gaining anything from that transaction. The main upside of Blasmophet is that he spots you a free card, but if you’re paying a card to get it, you’re not really gaining anything.

The main way to use it is as a one-time thing, where you happen to hit with Beckoning Hunger while having a good blood debt attack in your banish. You pass the turn, defend with three cards on the opponent’s turn, then use Hex Gauntlet to keep Blasmophet on board. On your turn, you pitch your last card and play the attack from your banished zone, then let Blasmophet die at the end of your turn. It’s not flashy, but you did gain a free card in this sequence, and that’s just value!

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Goremass Summoning, Consuming Command, and Blasmophet’s Boon are a cycle of blues that can be especially nice for enabling some endgame Blasmophet lines. Getting Goremass Summoning to work is not easy, but it can be trivial if you have managed to keep Hex Gauntlet around. If you have pitched Goremass Summoning and Consuming Command close to each other, and kept your life high, you know you will have a great sequence coming around at the end of the game.

When you draw these cards together, you can take the damage from your opponent, then on your turn use Hex Gauntlet and Goremass Summoning to bring forth Blasmophet, then use Consuming Command to make him attack for 6, then follow up with either a Hell Hammer swing, or even better, an attack with blood debt that has been hanging around in your banished zone. Having a play that deals 12 damage off four blues can truly swing the parameters of the endgame.

Consuming Appetite is another nice card to stack with Goremass Summoning, as they create a similar endgame, but one that requires no set up. You don’t even need Hex Gauntlet! You just need two other blues in the same hand as Consuming Appetite and Goremass Summoning. First, banish Consuming Appetite, then summon Blasmophet, attack for 6, then end on Consuming Appetite from your banished zone.

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Another way to use Blasmophet in the endgame is to feed him blood debt blues to get to send the big attacks that might have ended up stuck in your banished zone throughout the game, essentially upgrading your blues into bigger attacks in the endgame. You will typically have to eat some blood debt life loss to set this up, but it can be important for the Levia mirror.

Fatigue Levia

This is the safest version of the deck to draft, but also the least flashy. You don’t necessarily need many 6‘s in your deck and you don’t really care if all your blues have blood debt. The thing you care the most about is that you have a lot of 3 cards, efficient attacks, and that you can keep your banished zone clean. The only 2 cards you want to put in your deck are 7‘s or Dam the Shadowake (blue). The main reason you would care about running lots of 6‘s is if you’re running Rise to the Challenge.

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Your main gameplan is to defend with two cards and attack with a 7, eventually running the opponent out of cards. This gameplan does not really work if you also lose 1-2 from blood debt every turn, so you need to control your banished zone.

The Repentance equipment is quite important for fatigue Levia, so you don’t mind running two copies. Having one is necessary, because you need to turn Hell Hammer face-down, but a second copy can enable you to play out an attack that banishes a card from the top of your deck. Once you’ve hit a blood debt card that you don’t want to play out with a Gate, and used up your last Repentance, you can no longer send any attacks that banish a random card until you hit second cycle and know for sure that they will hit something you want to play (provided you also have a Gate to support this). This is not the way most people would imagine Levia playing out, but I can’t stress enough that you need to keep that banished zone empty. The less you rely on her hero ability, the better.

This version also cares a lot about defending breakpoints, so you want to prioritize getting a full set of equipment. Ideally, you have two pieces of Repentance, and two pieces of Dark Arcanite. You would only want Dark Arcanite Gloves against Viserai and the mirror (if your deck doesn’t do any Goremass Summoning shenanigans).

The recipe for this deck is:

• 4-6 7 attacks

• 4-6 strong 2-cost 3 attacks

• 2-4 efficient block cards and/or Gate makers

• 12 blues, as many as possible with 3

• Round out with 3 yellows

Getting into this archetype is often easiest when your draft has just started off with a pile of 3 blues but Malice isn’t open. You’re not really asking for Levia to be incredibly open, as long as you can field enough good attacks and get enough 3 cards. This version is especially nasty against Viserai, and really challenges them to play their game perfectly in order to not run out of cards.

“Boost” Levia

This version is much more aggressive, and built around Feeding Frenzy. If you don’t end up with multiple copies of this card, the payoffs may not quite be there, but you can still amass some nasty offense with similar cards.

Your main gameplan is to attack twice each turn, often banishing a card from the top of your deck every turn (which is remarkably similar to Mechanologist’s boost mechanic). You also get to run Headstrong Stampede and a few buffs as extra sources of go again.

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The way to build this deck is to go much lower on blue cards than you would normally, and instead max out on yellow 6‘s. This helps your odds of having a 6 on top every turn so that your cards function as intended.

The full recipe for this deck is:

• 2-4 3-cost attacks

• 8-10 2-cost attacks, including any of the go again 6 attacks

• 2-4 support cards, like pumps, go again, or Rise to the Challenge

• 8-10 yellow 6‘s

• 6-8 blues

• 10+ 6‘s total

If you go lower on 3-cost attacks you can probably also go even lower on blues, though there isn’t much of a payoff if you’re not replacing them with specifically yellow 6‘s. If you’re in a position where you’re getting these cards, absolutely go for it, but some of your strongest turns come from double blue hands where you send two go again attacks into a Hell Hammer swing.

As you might imagine, this deck is not able to control its banished zone, and will always be at the risk of losing life from blood debt. Any effect that opts gets better in this version, as it helps you make sure that you always have a 6 on top. Hex Gauntlet often also functions as a failsafe, giving go again to Feeding Frenzy even if the banish misses.

Another neat trick is to use effects that put a card from your hand on top of your deck to ensure that you don’t miss. They are not particularly efficient, but they do keep the damage rolling.

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This version is much better against Malice than fatigue Levia, but may struggle to match Viserai’s damage output. You don’t care nearly as much about having 3 cards, so you can often share a card pool with a fatigue Levia drafter, with both of you coming out with strong decks, as you’ll be prioritizing different cards.

Playing Against Viserai

In this matchup it is best to just try to defend well and don’t attempt any fancy stuff. Ideally, you’re still sending attacks and pushing their life down, especially early game before they traverse. On the turn where they traverse, try to defend fully rather than sending an attack, since the following turn will be when they have their blood debt full and would be happy to defend and send a small, efficient hand at you. This forces them to either have to empty their banished zone without sending the sword, or take more blood debt if they want to send higher numbers. Once they run out of cards in the banished zone, that’s when you can put your foot on the gas again, as they will need a 3-card hand to really take advantage of their hero power.

Playing Against Malice

You cannot fatigue Malice, as you are so inefficient at clearing zombies that you will eventually succumb to them or simply run out of cards yourself. The best gameplan you can employ is to just ignore their allies entirely and only attack face.

In order for this to work, you will need to have drafted a few sideboard cards. Anything that pumps is great because it lets you take more damage to present more damage, which is generally a good thing for you. Levia also has great access to overpower, and tapping into that can be a way to push over enough damage for lethal even after Malice has summoned her army.

Rocktop Bellow and Abyssal Force are examples of cards that get picked late but can grant overpower in a tight spot, and make for good sideboard cards in this matchup. If you keep your eyes open for any other overpower attacks during the draft, you can aid this plan more. It also makes your pump effects more efficient whenever they are attached to an overpower attack.

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You are generally much better positioned if Malice takes a while to summon the first Corrupted Corpse, since it can be hard to race such an efficient go again ally, and once you start spending a full turn to kill one, it’s harder to come back. It’s not always a losing play if your other turns are efficient enough, and they can’t immediately follow up with a second Corrupted Corpse. For this reason, you should look out for Seek Horizon (especially in yellow) and Rumbling Hunger (especially in blue) to sideboard, which are go again effects to clear a Corrupted Corpse, while not completely giving up damage on your turn.

Rumbling Hunger is particularly nasty, but you do need to combine it with your Hex Gauntlet for it to work. When you do, you also get a Blasmophet token, which will essentially just act as a free Gate to send an attack from the banished zone, before dying at the end of your turn. There’s not much use in keeping Blasmophet alive if you’ve already expended Hex Gauntlet.

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The Levia Mirror

This matchup tends to get very fatigue-centric unless both players are on the aggressive build. This means that banishing cards off the top of your deck has an extra cost, because whenever you hit a blood debt card, if you have to turn it face-down with a Repentance equipment, you’ve just lost a card from your deck. It’s even worse when you don’t hit a blood debt card!

Make sure to mostly defend with your banish-from-top attacks until you get to second cycle and know for sure that you are banishing something you want to use a Gate to play. This matchup is also where the Blasmophet endgame engines are most relevant, so keep these in mind if you have Goremass Summoning. This would also be a matchup where you can use Harbinger of Destruction. Usually this card is clunky and should just be viewed as a 3 6+ card, but here you can gain a lot of deck damage from sending 13 off one attack.

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Malice

Quick Hits

• Corrupted Corpses are the real reward and the way you win games.

• Defend well, prioritizing 3 cards over regular Necromancer cards.

• 4-5 zombies, and no more discard effects than your zombie count.

• Gates and “movers” are important, especially for double Corrupted Corpse turns.

• Fatigue Viserai, overwhelm Levia with board state, and use on-hits in the mirror.

Malice at her best effortlessly summons “Restless” zombies, then keeps herself healthy with good defense while waiting for them to die and create Corrupted Corpses. Once you get the first Corrupted Corpse out early, it starts to go downhill for the opponent, who has to either waste damage clearing it, or accept that you get a bonus 3 damage every turn. Either way, running them out of cards becomes easier and easier the more Corrupted Corpses you summon.

The most important thing to understand here is that her main deck Restless zombies are not threatening at all. Unlike previous board state decks, the opponent does not have to care about your Restless zombies. They don’t have go again and cost 1 to attack with, so they essentially just give her access to a “weapon” (1-cost 3, like Seven Sin Nebula). It’s fine, but nothing special, and many of her hands won’t even be able to make use of a 1-cost weapon anyway. Playing a Restless zombie from a graveyard also takes up your action point, so you can never take advantage of multiple zombies in play and develop your gameplan at the same time. Even a zombie like Restless Cleric is not really worth clearing, as the opponent would have to send 2 damage into it, and if you leave it around it only has time to gain 2 before it decays.

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The real reward is when your Restless zombies finally die and you get access to your Corrupted Corpse. This is why your Restless zombies have the decay mechanic, which is actually an upside, even if it might not seem like it at first glance. Without decay, the opponent could just easily ignore your allies and deny your gameplan. With decay, your endgame is inevitable.

Your main gameplan is to get a Restless zombie out, wait for it to decay, have a Gate at the ready, then play out a Corrupted Corpse. When you play a Corrupted Corpse like this, you will have spent just a single blue to get 3 value from the attack and demand your opponent to spend at least 3 damage clearing it on their turn. Sometimes they can’t do it efficiently, and it’s worth even more. That’s a baseline 1-card-6 with go again, so you can still follow up by sending another attack or activating Malice.

If your opponent leaves the Corrupted Corpse around, you get to defend their attacks, then attack with a Corrupted Corpse and another zombie off a single card, still pulling ahead on value. If they clear the Corrupted Corpse, hopefully you have developed more allies in the intervening turns while you were waiting so that you’ll be ready to summon another Corrupted Corpse. And then another. And then another after that.

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At the end of the day, this play pattern makes your opponent run out of cards, because for each Corrupted Corpse you summon, you’re pulling at least 6 value out of thin air. If you end up making four Corrupted Corpses throughout a game, you will essentially be up eight cards on your opponent (i.e. 24 points of value is roughly the same value as eight cards).

This strategy does require that you are always able to defend well. It takes a while for your plan to manifest, so you need to make sure life is high enough so that you can extend the game. As long as you make Corrupted Corpses you will dominate every endgame, so your goal is always to survive and extend the game to that point.

This plan has some push and pull with Malice’s card pool. The Restless zombies themselves don’t defend at all, and many of Malice’s class cards only defend for 2. The pair of Mutual Sacrifice and Bonded Burial are especially egregious, as their cost is hard to utilize, they eat up your action point, they’re not enablers because the opponent can stop them by defending, and on top of all that they also have only 2.You’re not interested in running any of these in any color in a standard Malice deck.
It’s a similar story with the 0-cost go again discard attacks, of which there are many. If your deck doesn’t need to make more than four Corrupted Corpses to take over a game, then you don’t want more than four zombies, which means you certainly don’t want too many discard outlets for your zombies. Appalling Bearers already spots you a free discard, so you try to just play the best discard attacks, which leaves Bone Mass and Malignant Migration to be low picks.

Even if you end up with a zombie in hand that you can’t discard, it’s not that bad if the rest of your hand defends for 9, and then you can spend your turn just playing out the ally from hand. Sure, you don’t get to attack with it, but you also get to save the card you’d have to pitch to do so (and you’d generally prefer to defend for 3 rather than attack for 3 anyway).

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Instead of picking a lot of class cards, your Malice deck is much more interested in Gate makers and 3 Shadow blues, because that’s the resource you’re actually restricted by. It becomes more clear when we look at the deck recipe:

• 4-5 Restless zombies

• 3-4 discard attacks

• 6-8 Gate makers / “movers” (move to graveyard effects)

• 12-14 blues, most with 3

• Round out with pumps and 3 attacks

The term “movers” refers to cards like Shadowrealm Strength, which can move a zombie from your banished zone to your graveyard. There are a few of these effects, and they essentially replace a Gate by moving your Corrupted Corpse to the graveyard and using Malice’s ability to play it instead. It’s worse than using a Gate, as you can’t then follow up your Corrupted Corpse by summoning a Restless zombie from your graveyard, but it’s better than being stuck with a banished Corrupted Corpse and losing life each turn. It can also be a huge punishment for your opponent if they try to kill a Restless zombie while you have no Gates, hoping to stick you with blood debt, and then you surprise summon the Corrupted Corpse anyway.

Another use case of movers is to use them in conjunction with attacks that banish a card from your hand, in order to move a Restless zombie into your banished zone, then into your graveyard, where it can be summoned by Malice. It’s kind of like discarding with extra steps, but you end up doing so at much better value. My favorite play is to use Shadowrealm Bloodhound, pitching a blue, banishing a zombie like Restless Cleric, follow up with Shadowrealm Strength, moving Restless Cleric from the banished zone into the graveyard, then summon Restless Cleric with Malice’s ability, attacking for 6.

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You also want to include a few regular attacks in Malice so that you can play a normal game when you haven’t drawn a zombie yet. Shadowrealm Bloodhound and other 2-cost attacks are nice for this, but what you’re especially interested in are the Shadow 0-cost 4 3 attacks, because they are the perfect follow up to a Corrupted Corpse attack. Breach Flesh can even make a Gate, so it’s very good in Malice.

You’re also interested in running some number of Darkest Hour and Step through Realms. Whenever you pitch a blue card to activate Malice, you will have 2 left over, which you can perfectly pair with a 2-cost go again effect. If you’re presented with the chance to defend for 3 with Darkest Hour, you’d generally prefer to do that and just send less damage, but it’s always nice to be able to extend a turn efficiently if given the chance.

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The requirements of this deck recipe go above 30 cards, though in limited you have to play exactly 30 in your deck. The reason there are more cards on this list is that your Gate makers and movers, while important, don’t all take up slots by themselves. They can also be part of your blue base, such as Dam the Shadowake (blue) being an acceptable 2 blue that also makes a Gate. They might also be part of your attacks and pumps, such as Shadowrealm Walker or Step through Realms. They might be part of your discard attacks, such as Ominous Toll, and they can even be a part of your zombies, such as Restless Corporal.

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Top Necromancer Picks

During the early stages of the draft, you’re not going to be on the lookout for many Necromancer cards. Your deck only needs 4-5 zombies, so those aren’t cards you need to prioritize early, typically just picking them up on the wheel. There are few notable ones, but mostly you are looking out for good Shadow cards and 3 blues. If you’ve kept yourself open by drafting a lot of these, it may actually mean that you’re well on your way to a Malice deck.

• Corpse Cover (red)

• Restless Looter

• Commit to Corruption (red)

• Ominous Toll (red)

• Restless Plowman

• Acrid Stench (red)

• Corpse Cover (yellow)

• Shadowrealm Solace

Getting zombies into your graveyard is never easy, but Corpse Cover is a unique effect that lets you discard a zombie for 2 points of value while still defending for 3. It can also destroy a zombie you already have in play, which can let you access your Corrupted Corpse sooner if you are already ready to summon it. This card is excellent, and I think you can consider picking it just below the Dark Arcanite equipment.

Because Malice’s whole plan revolves around Corrupted Corpses, having effects that can create more of them can be incredibly powerful, letting you skip the decay hoops entirely. Commit to Corruption is another one of these 3 go again effects, but it also adds a scary on-hit. If you manage to connect with this, you’ll typically have to lose 1 from blood debt, but that’s a bargain price for a bonus Corrupted Corpse.

For similar reasons, I like Acrid Stench a lot as well. It is worth noting that both of these cards do require you to support them with Gates, which is part of why you want more Gate makers and movers than you have Restless zombies in your deck.

Ominous Toll is the most premium of the discard attacks, as an easy way to make a Gate. In draft, Gates are typically contested enough that it won’t be a problem to have too many Gates, but you should still be aware that you are trying to pair your Gates with enough Corrupted Corpse generation to spend them. While I like Ominous Toll and Acrid Stench a lot, I’d rather have a mix of them. The ideal Malice deck has 1-2 Ominous Toll (red), 1 Acrid Stench (red) and no other 2 reds. You can also run the blue copies of these in small numbers, supporting your deck’s needs (e.g. run Acrid Stench (blue) if you have many Gate makers, or Ominous Toll (blue) if you’re lacking).

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Zombies

The Restless zombies are mostly interchangeable and not a priority. You want 4-5 of them in your deck, and it does not matter so much which ones they are, so most of them should not be seen as a signal, but rather something you just pick up 1-2 of per pack (very similar to Sinchants, actually).

However, the best of them are very much signals. Restless Looter is the best discard outlet you can have, letting you cash in a zombie for a whole new card. This one enables your zombie engine so effortlessly. Restless Plowman pays so cleanly for Malice’s ability that you basically end up with an extra card when you get to start your turn with it in play. It’s so good that it would be reasonable for your opponent to send an attack into it. Both of these are leagues above the other zombies, and they actually count as signals for Malice if you see them get passed to you.

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It’s important not to overestimate Restless Magister and Restless Quartermaster. Their on-hits are great but they only attack for 3, so it’s not very hard to defend them. On later turns they often just end up sitting there, as you’d rather spend your action point on something else. They become very good if your deck has a lot of pumps. If you use Darkest Hour to swing a Restless Magister for 7, the opponent will have a much harder time defending. So when you see these in the draft, don’t prioritize them until you have pumps. They’re nice to have but you’ll also be fine without them.

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Restless Shieldmaiden and Restless Outlaw are two I also want to highlight. They fulfill very specific roles in that they help manipulate your Corrupted Corpse count. Restless Shieldmaiden not only spots you an additional 1, it also gives you control over when you want your Corrupted Corpse, because you can cash in the Shadow Resist right away. Usually you end up summoning one Corrupted Corpse at a time, but with Restless Shieldmaiden you can time it to get two Corrupted Corpses in your banished zone during the same turn cycle, and if your hand allows for it, summon both in one turn to make it harder for your opponent to easily clear both.

Restless Outlaw gives two Corrupted Corpses for one ally, and can help you out if your zombie count is low. It does ask you to support it with Gates, so running this in a zombie-heavy deck can lead to problems. I usually like this in my four-zombie decks and don’t care much for it when I have five.

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Playing Against Viserai

Your gameplan in this matchup is to be defensive and run them out of cards. You still want to present some damage so that they also have to use some cards on defense. Once they have to start using their sword to clear Corrupted Corpses, that’s when you can pull ahead (note that the sword doesn’t make a Runechant when it hits an ally).

You want to run a low amount of 2 reds, so boarding out Bone Mass, etc. can be fine, as well as going down to three or four zombies in exchange for including some 3 yellows. Be careful not to waste your Appalling Bearers early, as you will eventually hit a spot where an awkwardly drawn zombie is getting in the way of your ability to defend an on-hit.

Playing Against Levia

As long as you develop your gameplan and spend your other cards defending, you should be fine. You need to bide your time and not drop too low on life to avoid dying to overpower. Block cards can be crucial for stopping overpower, especially blues and yellows, which you can pitch early to make sure you have access to in the late game, where their overpower attacks are scariest.

The Malice Mirror

The mirror often ends up being decided by who can send the most Corrupted Corpses. Fatigue is a relevant factor, but it’s not always the defining part. Clearing Corrupted Corpses is easy, typically with your own go again effects and your own zombies, but in the end, one person can run out. A nice trick is to lose some life from blood debt in order to set up multiple Corrupted Corpses on the same turn, which means your opponent will have to take lots of damage to clear them, leaving you with a tempo lead.

You want to have a few more ways to make Corrupted Corpses in your deck, so boarding into six zombies can work out nicely. Restless Steed is especially good in this matchup, as it will get guaranteed go again when you use it to clear a zombie. Commit to Corruption in all colors (especially blue) is also particularly good, as you can guarantee the on-hit when you send the attack into their zombie. You can also use Breach Flesh to generate enough Gates to pay for the extra Corrupted Corpses, again by using the guaranteed on-hit.

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Take Your Seat

This marks the end of the guide. If you’ve descended this far, we both know there is no way back. You must return with this forbidden power you have obtained and usurp your next booster draft. Now that you are no longer scared of losing life or running out cards, what could possibly stop you now?

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