Intro
For this weekend ranked, I wanted a fun and fast deck that was good against the light-heavy meta, so when I saw [tst] apollo’s hidden rush deck from [tst] mudman’s What To Play Over The Weekend: Ep 19, I knew I found the deck for this weekend.
Deception has become my favorite god, being able to sneak out wins like no one else. Sometimes you cheese out wins with Dark Knives on Shadow of Lethenon or The Hollow generating a card every turn. The deck has a flexible playstyle; it can be aggressive and rush your opponent down with hidden creatures or take it slow and run your opponent out of cards with your card generation.
Decklist
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You don’t need to run Orfeo and Avatar of Deception if you don’t have them. The slot is pretty flexible; I would run well-statted utility creatures like Solemn Lecturer or Inconspicuous Carriage instead.
Orfeo is pretty annoying for some decks to handle. He usually trades for a 1 or 2 drop for 0 mana, so he gives you good tempo early.
Vault Vagabond is decent, getting a good card and knowing what your opponent will draw is good, but a 3/3 dies easily and isn’t the greatest from behind. Not having hidden anymore makes it hard to get off if you don’t have board control. I usually played it early for tempo instead of waiting for 5 mana to play and hide it.
Pyramid Wardens are harder to replace now that Skeleton Heavy isn’t neutral. There’s no good statted 2 drop that fits in well. Munosian Infiltrator might be decent to swap in.
Frumentarii Instigator is pretty good even without a dedicated guild deck. You have enough good creatures that are guild you can put in 2 instigators easily. Getting 1 draw from instigator is good, any more is amazing. This is especially dangerous in the mirror since you’ll draw from your opponent’s guild creatures too.
Guild Enforcer is pretty strong in the current meta since creature decks are going more wide than tall. Less control around is also good, so you can afford to run slower, big guys. Some decks like Zoo Light or Zombie Death hit a brick wall against Guild Enforcer.
No Hunting Trap means tall creatures are difficult to deal with, but it is a meta call, there aren’t good targets in Light or Magic. This didn’t come up often unless war got a buff on a creature, but that usually happens only if you go second.
Rapture Dance won a few games for me, but it heavily depends on the meta. War usually goes tall with buffs than wide by 6 mana and by then Slayer will usually finish you off. It’s great against Light since they have no reach and depend on having a wide board usually to win. One game against nature, they had double Giant Pangolins that I couldn’t answer expect stall with Stoneskin Poison, but I drew a Rapture and wiped their board.
Matchups
| God | Archetype | Score (Wins/Matches) |
|---|---|---|
| Death | ||
| Zombies | 3/3 | |
| Deception | ||
| Order | 1/1 | |
| Light | ||
| Aggro | 7/8 | |
| Control | 1/1 | |
| Magic | ||
| Tempo | 2/2 | |
| Control | 3/3 | |
| Nature | ||
| Midrange | 3/3 | |
| War | ||
| Midrange | 1/1 | |
| Aggro | 1/3 | |
| Total | 22/25 |
| Win | Lost | |
|---|---|---|
| First | 11 | 1 |
| Second | 11 | 2 |
You need to know when to transition from board control to going faced based on your opponent’s top end, board state, and how many cards each player has in hand. Sometimes you need to ignore board instead of trading and hope to finish them before they can turn it around.
The deck handles going second surprisingly well even though you run Stoneskin Poison as your only early removal spell. You can trade well enough to last to 6 mana and hope your opponent overextends into Rapture Dance.
Zombies are easy going first since you can get board control and stop them from getting off their frenzy effects easily. Going second is annoying to chew through all their zombies if they get their zombie makers online. Keep an eye on the sanctum for relic removal, sometimes you are ahead enough or get blessed favor to get the removal for their Necroscepter.
Most of the zoo light decks ran Zealous March so gudecks called them control, but they played a zoo playstyle and just have March as top end. They have no answer to Shadow of Lethenon so you win some games from getting it early and wearing them down with hidden creatures. It is an easy matchup if you can keep the board clear, just kill them before Zealous March can come down and wreck you. Armor Lurker and Guild Enforcer put in a lot of work against Light’s creatures.
I faced 0 Dralamar decks, the deck should be able to handle it I think with Armor Lurker and Guild Enforcer. Tempo magic can go either way depending on first/second and mull, it needs a good pilot to do well compared to most decks. Control magic is pretty easy to run over unless they draw Lightning Talisman or AOE early. Be careful playing creatures and overextending into your opponent’s AOE.
Nature can be hard since their random spells go through hidden. Don’t rely on a hidden creature or go wide to play around it. Depending on the mulls and first/second, you can either establish board early through PW or Armor Lurker or trade evenly and hope for an opportunity to get a huge swing from something like Rapture Dance.
Aggro war can run you over if they go first and you don’t mull great. I think Patient Pickpocket and The Hollow are too slow to keep in the mull in this matchup. Your 3 drops are kind of bad in this matchup since 3hp dies to a lot of things like Blade of Styx, Viking Longship, and Orcish Elite.
Gameplay Video
A few assorted matches that I recorded: 2 control magic, 1 aggro war, 1 zombie death. The video has no audio since I play with the game muted. There are misplays here and there. I should take my turns slower and use up all my time to think first. Nothing notable I feel happens in them, but you can get a sense of how the deck runs.
I am surprised you went 3/3 against Mid-ranged Nature, especially with no hunting trap. I rarely go board-wide against deception, because of rapture dance. That said I did lose to a couple of Deception decks this weekend, I chalked it up to being rusty XD Had one of my worst showing at 14/25.
I think I mostly got lucky in those matches, either got board early against the aggro deck or rapture dance turned it around. It's definitely a tough matchup.
I tried hidden rush once or twice it went on decent nto a 22/25 performance though hahaha. Maybe the cat is a game changer along with orfeo and the hollow
22 is amazing! Congratulations!
Good to see Deception can be so successful.
Congrats, 22 wins is insane! Although I don't play much Deception, it does seem like CSR came out with quite a few more Hidden cards; did none of them pass the bar for replacing these pre-existing cards?
Didn't pull them :(
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