March Double Feature: The Deck Doctor
/This month we’re going back to the magic… of the Elves of Epic Edition and looking back fondly at one of the most absurd Warlords to ever get printed and was quickly nerfed into the void before the end of the AEG era. We also have a second Elf deck list that harkens back to the beginning of it all. Before we start building our deck, allow me to introduce to you first the Warlord that became the greatest Dragonlord killer of all time: Serolia Calix.
GenCon 2007 was a tumultuous time for the game. Ginerva was running rampant, we had a “speed singles” tournament, and the speculation had already begun that the game would see its run come to an end that year. The bright spot though was the new set Light & Shadow had been released there and we had new cards to look forward to and play with. Little did we know, this Warlord found her way into the print run without the Once Per Turn clause on her second ability which proved to be incredibly powerful when built with necromancer support to bring Elemere back as much as possible and draw you deck until you could use Evoke Crisis powered up by Ring of Blasting. It’s hard to survive 20 strikes inflicting 3 wounds a piece with huge bonuses. I watched as the entire stock of Kar’rak Urartu was lost in Dragonlord challenges against Serolia as she consistently would blow up everything the DL could play. Also watched the Medusan Lord Sedara Tansiq almost fall to here as well had it not been for an incredibly lucky Fulfill Destiny. Fortunately she was hit with errata to be OPT and Evoke Crisis is up to a character’s level now. And Ring of Blasting can’t start in play in Ancients so she is much more tame, but I think she still has potential.
despite being a druid, elemere is the fuel for the fire in this deck
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not much of an Elf player. I like those scrappy rogues in the Free Kingdoms so I’ve workshopped through a few ideas and bounced them off a few people to make sure something viable actually came together. I’ve discussed 3 different styles for this deck so I’ll be including characters, actions, and items from each. I ultimately settled on spell blitz but you could run an Ardanalis deck or use characters that make use of her Daybreak order on turn one. Let’s take a peak at our characters and see who’s who.
Characters:
Our starting army is pretty straight forward. Obviously, Serolia is at the head of the table. Our level 2s need to support whichever strategy we’re going for. In my case, I start 1 Elemere and 1 Kinnel. An Ardy deck would swap to Skyrekks, though it has hard to not have one Elemere sitting in your second rank to use her draw react in combination with Serolia’s order. My level 1s are Javvyn for the simple reason that I hate the stealth scout (never succeeded with a stealth check in a 5 round tournament) and I think Javvyn disrupts an opponent more than expected. An Ardy deck would make use of Bone Golem to hold the line until you find your Ardanalis. For her Daybreak ability, I do like Naia Calix since she can make use of some second level spells like Fiery Bolts and nab someone’s Yeg’s Altar though Tyrius or Amatria probably work just as well. For my deck, the start is below:
Starting Army:
Serolia Calix x1
Elemere x1
Kinnel x1
Javvyn x3
With our starting army set, it’s time to start piecing together the rest of our character list. My deck likes to draw cards so with that in mind lets look at the pool of characters I’m looking at one-by-one:
Daedelia? is that you? you look different now. I like the shield.
The Lost Bride: She’s definitely an auto-include x3. She gives me an extra body to throw up to the front, she gives me an extra card, and she can be a good choice for using Serolia’s draw order. There’s a lot of benefits to having her in the deck.
Toren Yscar: Toren is good in just about every deck. That trend holds true here where I’m trying to draw into my spells and blow up my opponent’s spot as soon as possible.
Ivaas: Ivaas was the poor man’s Toren Yscar during Campaign Edition and I think is overlooked in Ancients. It is tough to clog up your rank 4 to use his spend react, but he is another way for us to draw a card or shuffle our deck up if we don’t like what we see before we pay the cost on Serolia’s order.
Fayed Dythanus: Fayed helps me thin the deck quicker, albeit relies on my opponent failing saves generated by From Dust to Dust. Running x3 FDTD gives me a good chance of seeing one in my opening hand since I’ll eat Elemere to draw an extra card and then peep through my top 5 cards to find a spell. Kinnel uses it against a level 2, if it hits I fetch Fayed, play FDTD again when Fayed hits the board, fetch the 2nd Fayed and hold it until I had a nice order spell like Fiery Bolts or Final Power in my discard pile.
Vivian / Jackals of Mourn / Dex Glyn: All of these characters are in the same bucket of characters that can get to work the same turn they hit the board. Vivian can shoot, Jackals can move and hunt, Dex can enter play into an illegal rank and fire. We want to keep the blitz going strong in my deck and all of these contribute to that in some way.
Archer Tower: I’m shooting and want all my shots to be good. This is another good target for FDTD if I want to get it on the table early to give my shooters more oomph to their hits.
Kapix: A well-timed Kapix can end a game. It’s basically an auto-include in any Elf deck.
Remorna: Remorna is a glass cannon, but it’s a cannon we shouldn’t mind breaking. With the amount of spells we’ll be running in the deck, she can make sure I get my big ones like Mass Blessing and Incinerate back so they can be utilized again.
Tresven: Look, I love Tresven. I’m incredibly thankful he was reprinted in 4E without being changed for the worse. He’s an extra body and fires a shot the moment he hits the board. He might not be a wizard, but he helps us swing tempo in our favor.
Myhrena: Myrhena could find a spot in the deck to make sure the strikes that we need to hit have more of a guarantee to do so. I think she’d be a stronger candidate if Serolia had been printed at level 5 and we could use spells like Chain Lightning.
That’s our blitzy character pool, but what if we wanted to go with Ardanalis or try to abuse the Daybreak ability? Let’s take a dive into what that pool of characters might look like real quick.
Kargaz is such a big player in this kind of a deck that I’m not going to resize this. I swear it’s not because I can’t figure out how to do that. Thanks for believing in me.
Kargaz Dythanus: Kargaz is an MVP in the Daybreak / Ardaanalis style of this deck. Find your Ardanalis with FDTD, put him into play and swing, eat him with Serolia, play Kargaz to bring him back. Stun him up afterwards and let him use the Daybreak ability to wound someone in the first rank. If you can get Ardy killed again before Kargaz dies, you get another swing in when Kargaz bites it.
Ardanaalis: I made it this fair into the article and discovered I’d only spell Ardy’s name with 1 “A” instead of the 2 “A”s here. While I weep and have to go back and correct my spelling, make your opponent weep by recurring Ardy back and forth from the discard pile. Serolia would have loved this card in Epic Edition before she got hit with the nerf. Now, she can at least kill him once a turn and with the right support she can kill him to get that effect more and more. (EDIT: I didn’t change it and I’m not going to. I stand by my mistakes.)
Cyrus Netheryn: Another necromancer here to kill Ardy and bring him back. The scribe is nice, but I’m not sure it will see much use since you probably want to play stuff like Wheel of Death / FDTD when you get it.
Death Fog: Put Ardy into your hand or a Bone Golem. The Lost Bride is also a very good candidate to bring back so you can draw more cards and as we all know drawing more cards always equals more fun.
Amatria Tansiq: He’s going to have a hard time passing the DC20 check to inflict a wound, but it is tempting to use that order and wound an opponent’s character, swing next order, and then punish the character that finally kills Amatria with Amatria’s react.
Elemere: We probably always want to start at least one Elemere with Serolia, but we could definitely find room for 2 more in this type of deck. Move her forward to use Serolia’s Daybreak order and tempt your opponent into giving you a card.
Skyyrek / Tresven: Level 2s that add stability and tempo to your deck and have the skill to potentially wound someone with that Daybreak ability. Tresven also gets us a quick shot off as soon as he comes into play.
Ayaba Waverunner: Another way to bring Ardanaalis into play from the discard pile.
Kyra Squib: Kill the Squib, set the die to a 20, bring her back. Swing, order, swing, order. Potential to put 4 wounds out from one character if you’re finding ways to make 20s happen.
Rotale Dythanus: A way to kill Ardy, strike at the opposing army, and if you’re lucky get a Daybreak wound out there.
Barrow Wight: Gives us another way to strike out at the opposing army. Benefits from Mass Blessing / Wheel of Death since it says that it strikes as if in your front rank.
Soulless Scavenger: Another character we can get into play in rank one, get use of Daybreak, and bring back using necromancer support or it’s own ability.
Whey: Big +4 skill! That’s great for a level one that’s looking to pass that DC 20 skill check. Milling part of the opponent’s is just gravy on the biscuit if you have a good opportunity to use it.
Time to bring it all together for my deck. I’m going spells and card draw, so my character pool ended up becoming something like this:
Characters: 19
Kapix x1
Toren Yscar x1
Archer Tower x1
Fayed Dythanus x2
Remorna x2
Vivian x3
Dex Glyn x3
Jackals of Mourn x3
The Lost Bride x3
We’ve talked a lot about spells already so I think it’s most appropriate to go through our spells and figure out which ones we want to use in order to bring the heat. Let’s look at what our options are for actions.
that stupid green and purple table isn’t the only character that loves this spell.
Actions:
My only real beef with Serolia’s actions is that she isn’t level 5. I guess somehow someone during Epic Edition realized how insane she would have been if she had access to stuff like Cheat Death. They just had to draw the line somewhere! That being said, she doesn’t have to do a whole lot of lifting in this deck if you don’t need her to. Let’s look at what our spell options are for this deck so we can begin making some selections:
From Dust to Dust: I think I’ve already tipped my hand and said FDTD is a lock. Killing an enemy character and fetching a card off of it from one card is too good to ignore, plus Fayed let’s us do it again. Its just fantastic as long as your opponent rolls poorly (they will, it’s Untap, trust the process.)
Fiery Bolts / Final Power / Evoke Crisis: Here is where a lot of our offense comes from. Kinnel is going to make use of Bolts / Power on turn 1 to make wounds stick. Evoke Crisis was the classic win condition for Serolia and while I won’t be doing 20 strikes anymore, it can still build up if I’m drawing cards as I intend to be.
Mass Blessing: The essential cleric spell staple card. I like giving my planar start some extra AC to make them more annoying to hit. Gives Javvyn a chance to put some wounds on as well. Just an all-around great card.
Incinerate: Elves are squishy and I can’t imagine Serolia is going to always get to sit in rank 3. Packing Incinerate gives her something to do if she has to fall forward or potentially lets her spend to punch harder. Probably our best option for a spend order for her to make use of.
Severed of Flesh: She’s no necromancer, sure, but Serolia can use this to kill an Elemere again if she wants to do so. You’d have to wait a turn now, but that’s still another extra card next turn if Elemere doesn’t die before then which still gets you the card you want.
Meet at the Inn! - I am a Meet at the Inn hater. I always think giving my opponent even one card is not worth giving myself 2 cards. I don't think that has to be the case with Serolia. If I hit hard early enough, I can play Meet late in the turn when that card should be a dead card if I’m controlling the board.
Lightning Bolt: Probably doesn’t make the cut, but it is a big strike for 2 wounds and gives Serolia more to spend for an get in on the action. Could potentially be a kill shot if we’re using items like Red Wyrm’s Egg and/or Ring of Blasting.
Phantasm: Gives us another card out of the deck and options to help us capitalize if FDTD fails. Can Phantasm Fayed and do try FDTD again or pick up The Lost Bride and fetch another card.
Extensions: More draw for Serolia to use and find the stuff we need when we need it.
Exhaustion: Duh. Exhaustion is always considered for any deck being built in Ancients. At least as x2 include. It’s too strong to not have it in your deck building tool kit.
Premonition: Seers are all the rage right now but the Deverenians aren’t the only ones that have quality Warlord seers. With Winter Warfare still out there in the environment this is our best protection against it other than blitzing harder.
Now we move on to my beef with deckbuilding in this game. There are too many good cards and not enough deck space to include them all. Getting this together made me wish the deck minimum was 60 cards so I could include more stuff from the other style deck list that would use Ardanaalis or make the best use of the Daybreak ability. Let’s look at some of those now.
be blessed my friends and gain new sweet skills to use
Wheel of Fate: Serolia doesn’t need to spend for this and it helps us thin the deck and get stuff like Ardy or Soulless Scavenger into the discard pile quicker so we can make better use of it.
Forewarning: No need to spend for this one either. A free card and a chance to take a peak at what your opponent is up to so you can use your cards to respond as best as you can to their strategy.
Lift Up Your Voices: You’re correct seeing this and thinking “She’s not a cantor?” But if we’re trying to use the Daybreak order with low level characters, we still get AC and Skill out of LUYV. It’s as good as boosting your attack in this case, but we need to see it on the first turn in order for it to be useful.
Wheel of Death: We play a lot of things that are useful in the discard pile so Wheel of Death is strong here to give us more ATK / AC to keep our front rank bolstered and get our discard pile pals in position to do their thing.
Clerical Blessing: What is this card? This is a huge skill buff that pairs well with Elemere moving forward to boost up the skill of everyone in rank one. That DC20 now becomes DC12 and is much more manageable for all of our low-level characters to hit.
Elemental Barrage: If we’re discarding cards quickly with Wheel of Fate / Wheel of Death, Elemental Barrage can hold off a potential threat our opponent has for a bit and net us an extra card. Would be great if it didn’t say “opposing” on it!
Now let’s bring it all home for this spell slinging version I’m working on and get our spells in order:
Actions: 21
Evoke Crisis x3
Final Power x3
Fiery Bolts x3
From Dust to Dust x3
Meet at the Inn x3
Incinerate x3
Mass Blessing x3
I don’t think there are any real surprises in here as I’ve typed my hand that I want to fire off as many strikes as possible as quickly as possible. If I had to make any more adjustments, I think I’d find room for Severed of Flesh and Exhaustion. I hate not having Exhaustion x2 at a minimum and that Severed would give us more use out of Elemere past the first turn. Premonition could definitely still find a home in my list as well to give Serolia more to spend for and provide some insurance, but the list is pretty tight to find room for stuff. We’re already limited to 4 items total. Speaking of…
Items
I want to draw more cards. is that greed? or is it having fun?
I don’t think it is much of a secret that wizard items are kind of poop in Ancients. There are a just a handful that can find their way into most decks like Wand of Negation does. Unless you’re a necromancer, you don’t get a whole lot of mileage out of equipping stuff to your wizards. Here’s the card pool of potential choices for these last 4 slots.
Ring of Vorn: The classic wizard moves someone wizard item. Could help position Vivian into rank 1 for shooting deeper into the opponents army as well as getting some action out of Lost Bride if we would prefer to keep her around as an extra body instead of eating her to draw a spell.
Ring of Blasting: The ring is an option for dealing additional wounds with our spells. Powering up our order spells is a plus, but our army probably doesn’t want Jackals of Mourn to lose 3ATK when we send them out for the hunt. I think the upside is huge though if you get an early Evoke Crisis off that can be boosted.
Red Wyrm’s Egg: Another option for getting more wounds on a target when we need to. Pairs well if you want to use Lightning Bolt over Incinerate for Serolia’s spend order. Can we get her reprinted in the 30th anniversary but as level 5 so she can use Chain Lightning?
Living History: One of the weaknesses of the Elves in this game is that they are squishy and their ranks are going to break at some point in a match. Living History gives us an extra body to use to keep our ranks stable while we blast the opponent’s army.
Wand of Negation: One of the few wizard staple items in the game. Wand of Negation has been seeing play due to big guy’s like Xod coming down off their throne after they’re well equipped for battle. Also helps against some of the cleric control decks out there using Peace.
Shadow of Greed: This is worth a look because it lets us draw cards and it might be able to see some real use in matches with cleric control and other spell blitz decks.
Glyph of Fate: This is for the Ardy / Daybreak style decks that want to be able to generate a 20 for cards like Kyra Squib. Can recycle it with Nodwick if we want to keep the fun going.
Ring of the Savant: Serolia needs to chill out in rank 3 to get it equipped, but if we’re looking to shore up our cleric actions in the Daybreak / Ardy version we’ve laid out as we go, this lets us do stuff like Wheel of Fate and Mass Blessing again which is usually always good.
And my picks for items are as follows:
Items: 4
Ring of Blasting x1
Ring of Vorn x1
Shadow of Greed x1
Wand of Negation x1
I think that gives us a deck now. Let’s have a look at the final product as it all came together!
Serolia the Spell-Slinging Seer:
Starting Army:
Serolia Calix
Elemere
Kinnel
Javvyn x3
Characters: 19
Kapix
Toren Yscar
Archer Tower
Fayed Dythanus x2
Remorna x2
The Lost Bride x3
Vivian x3
Dex Glyn x3
Jackals of Mourn x3
Actions: 21
Evoke Crisis x3
Final Power x3
Fiery Bolts x3
From Dust to Dust x3
Meet at the Inn x3
Incinerate x3
Mass Blessing x3
Items: 4
Ring of Blasting x1
Ring of Vorn x1
Shadow of Greed x1
Wand of Negation x1
This decks biggest enemy truly is the 50-card minimum. I don’t want to really go over that in 99% of my decks even if I can make the math work in my favor. I’m finishing this write up the Friday morning before the tournament starts and I may yet take another pass at this to include Severed of Flesh in order to get more mileage out of Elemere. It also feels horrible to not have at least 2 Exhaustion in my deck. There are really 3 different decks that we’ve laid cards out for so if you’re feeling something else with Serolia, you definitely have options to make something that will fit your playstyle. But if you don’t like Serolia, I do have something a little more old-school to spotlight in this month’s Double Feature.
This is the top secret super spicy tech that Wes himself is bringing to the tournament this month. In keeping with the theme of the spell blitz renaissance, he’s shared his own spell blitzing deck list featuring the (yas) High Queen Tepheroth.
Slay queen.
Starting Army:
Amatria Tansiq x3
Eirlas x2
Tepheroth
Characters: 19
Jackals of Mourn x3
Tresven x3
The Lost Bride x3
Vivian x3
Dex Glyn x3
Kapix
Toren Yscar
Fayed Dythanus x2
Actions: 23
Tzin’s Attention x3
Meet at the Inn! x3
Medusan Lord’s Gambit x3
Severed of Flesh x3
Wheel of Death x3
From Dust to Dust x3
Evoke Crisis x3
Exhaustion x2
Items: 2
Helm of Undying
Ring of Blasting
Wes’ deck takes advantage of all of Tephy’s Elves being able to cast 1st level spells so you can frustrate any opponent using Tzin’s Attention to see if they can be lucky on 5 rolls at the start of a turn. She is a Necromancer so she gets to use the the good stuff like Wheel of Death / Helm of Undying / Severed of Flesh and get the full benefits for each of those cards. MLG / Ring of Blasting can help finish a game out or instead you can blow up an army using Evoke Crisis. Is it spicy? Yes. Is it also old? Yes. This deck is hereby referred to as Old Spice.
And that’ll do it for this month’s Deck Doctor Double Feature. By chance I got an Elf deck list from Westley so this month was all about our favorite evil Elves and their necromantic ways. Be sure to check back next month as we start deck building for Battlefields and spotlight some community deck lists again for this very different kind of format.