With Raffard’s Vengeance and reworked Siege Master we have even more thinning to Northern Realms than ever before to get our key mages. The whole strategy is to play Students and get as many patience value as you can to get carryover on Alumnies and then you restore their order or replay them to get a lot of points by using PMP or Casting Contest. The deck cointains engine non-dependent control tools like Margarita, Boiling Oil and Seltkirk, and if we talk about him – if you have Chapter of Wizards and two leader charges, you can remove big unit instantly, so it’s like Ivar for NR. Though it’s engine deck you have strong short round too, especially if you manage to keep Alumnies/Chapter to replay them again with spells. Long round is also extremely dangerous if you don’t have a lot of control to remove engines. The deck is vulnerable to control decks as you can’t get zeal on Alumnies or even neither points from them, so your only win condition left is spam of Spellweavers.

Gameplan

Mulligan:

Raffard’s Vengeance, Leticia Charbonneau, Amphibious Assault (or John Natalis), Students, Winch. Always toss back Alumni and Practice Makes Perfect in Round 1. Keep them in Round 3.

Round 1:

First round is very important to our strategy, you play students and then try to manage to stick Leticia on board so she can double your patience on students. In best case scenario you should have around 10 patience students.

Round 2:

If you play against control decks you should push to get out negative trades on your cards, if not, you should go for a long round where you play a lot of engines.

Round 3:

If your opponent has been killing your students or you haven’t managed to develop them to get zeal on Alumni you can go for plan B, which is Spellweaver. You can spawn additional one from Chapter of Wizards. In short round it is good to have order from Chapter to get additional Mage to play safely PMP from hand or Gerhart.

Matchups

Mirror:

In the mirror, it’s very important to give Ban Ard student the priority, as having access to control tools later can greatly help. Ultimately though, getting the highest value on either one student and PMP should be the deciding factor.

Monsters:

Vampires: Very good machup. Witches Sabbath usually benefits the NR player more than the MO player (reviving cards like Raffard, Seltkirk, or a high patience value Alumni). They also have close to no control option, so growing students is very easy. Careful with Drowner, which can row control Leticia, so there is no need to be too greedy with her.

Scoia’tael:

Milva: Very unfavored machup: Milva is the deck that pushed NR into unplayability during the season of the Wild Hunt and even with Milva being nerfed, they still have all the needed tools to deal with the students. Again, Necromancy and Shani can give a chance to raise a student (preferably Aretuza) big enough to outvalue the deck in the late game, but it’s very difficult.

Nilfgaard:

Assimilate: Good machup: The only card that can deal with Leticia is Yennefer’s Invocation, so Leticia can give free wins fairly often. Playing Alumni should be avoided until the last round, as Illusionists eventually copying them after an early copy of a student can be very troublesome. Students played through Amphibious Assault can’t be removed and Tourney Joust is usually not sufficient to deal with all of the students, which makes the machup favored. It’s important to avoid having Gerhart or Chapter of Wizards copied through the leader ability.

Hyperthin: Slightly unfavored or even machup: Hyperthin usually runs lots of removal options, but if a round 1 is successful and at least 1 student grows big enough, it is very possible for the Alumni spam to outvalue the late game push. The outcome of the game depends heavily on the outcome of R1 and thus draw RNG (especially on the NG side) comes into play a lot.

Skellige:

Shrooms: Very good machup. Their control options are limited, so growing a student big (through Leticia or not) is usually easy. If they pass early in R1, the player should play up to 4 cards in case Leticia is in play, otherwise take the win with whatever patience value is achieved and push R2. If they don’t pass early, then it should be an easy win and they should be pushed in R2.

Syndicate:

Bounties: Unfavored machup: Bounty heavy SY has enough removal options in R1 to deal with most everything that NR sets up. But a Veiled Leticia can be almost impossible for them to deal with if they don’t draw Moreelse and can give free wins. Raffard’s Vengeance can also give enough tempo and power in R1 to allow for a student to grow large enough. Teching Necromancy is especially useful in this machup as it is greatly helpful to “finish” raising one of the students to get Zeal on the Alumni later.

Details

Good against:

SK Shrooms, any MO deck, any greedy engine deck.

Bad against:

Control decks

Win condition:

Leticia, Alumni and other top-end cards

Card replacements:

Boiling Oil -> Carrobalista

Assimilate, still being pretty confident it can generate more than enough points to win, has gotten a little less greedy. Swapping out Joachim for Heatwave is certainly a bold move, but having both heatwave and invocation in your arsenal gives you a surprising amount of instant removal in a deck that most people expect to be pure greed. With alumni continuing its revenge tour all the way to tier one, menacing removal engines like Crach an Craite, and some people still trying to make Siege work, you’re going to welcome the extra removal. Really though, if you’ve played this deck before the patch, you’ve pretty much played it in its current form.

Gameplan

Mulligan:

Mage Torturer 

Calveit

Illusionist

Blightmaker

If you need any lower provision cards, make sure to draw them before you play Calveit. Mulligan VERY aggressively for Mage Torturers if you want to play Artaud for more than four points. Be careful not to brick your hand with a Mage Assassin.

Round 1:

The most important parts of r1 are:

1. Looking out for a good Mage Torturer target.

2. Deciding whether to play Calveit.

It is usually advantageous to play Calveit in the earliest round possible, but it can backfire pretty heavily in specific circumstances. If you play him in r1 against a deck with a strong r2 bleed, then lose r1,you are setting yourself up to be bled for literally every important card in your deck. Also, if you decide to run Joachim, playing him after Calveit can cause you to massively overcommit in an early round, especially if you copy him with Coup de Grace.

Round 2:

Usually you would pass, but this depends on the matchup/how many assimilate engines you have access to. If you have a lot of engines, you want a longer round. Consider a soft bleed with your illusionists, as this has the added bonus of setting up Mushy Truffle’s order as carryover.

If you lost r1, you’ll find this deck is extraordinarily resistant to bleeding. Calveit can be a liability if you face a determined and skillful bleeder, but most of the time he just provides you with such high quality cards that any who dare try to bully you find themselves in a world of hurt. If your opponent seems determined to bleed to a short r3, don’t be afraid to commit your leader to gain card advantage.  

Round 3:

Don’t forget to use your leader before your opponent plays all their good cards! Set up your Assimilate engines asap to prevent this from happening.

Matchups

Mirror:

In general, the one who has more assimilate engines win, but the tricky part is a board space – in long r3 don’t play Blightmaker into Mage Assassin as well as Illusionists aren’t that good unless targeting an assimilate engine. Clogging your own board is the best strategy, because even if your opponent copies your high-end golds – Artaud or Braathens – there should be no space for him to utilize them.

Details

Good against:

NR, ST, SK Warriors

Bad against:

Vampires, SK Rain, SK Gedy can be tricky

Win condition:

Assimilate engines, Artaud and Braathens are the powerhouses of this deck.

Card replacements:

Heatwave -> Joachim

Heatwave is pretty necessary against decks like Pirates and Alumni, but Joachim is still an extremely powerful card in this list when combined with Coup de Grace, giving you a ton of point slam as well as an Assimilate procc. 

Ointment -> Van Moorlehem Hunter

Ointment makes your Calveit more consistent, but Hunter’s lock can help if you find yourself running into a lot of engine overload.

Gameplan

If you’ve touched the game at all in the last 9 months, you won’t be surprised to see Syndicate midrange shitting on every other faction yet again. The “nerf” to KOB and Jackpot basically just meant trading out a random 5 prov for a 4 prov and changing literally nothing else. You lose like tops 4 points, so don’t even worry about it, you still have a few dozen points to spare.

Mulligan:

Just don’t have The Flying Redanian or KOB in hand. Every of your Golds is good.

Round 1:

Win.
Play your good gold cards. This sounds sarcastic, but its honestly really just that simple. You just play stupidly high value cards until you win. As long as you don’t accidently pull KOB round 1 you’re good.

Round 2:

Win harder.
Play your remaining gold cards. This time you can play Savolla and pull KOB.

Round 3:

You already won last round.

Details

Good against:

Almost everything

Bad against:

Other Syndicate decks, maybe a good Assimilate

Win condition:

Classic KOB+Savolla, destroy everything they play

Card replacements:

Philipia -> Heatwave

Gameplan

Pirates since reworked Onslaught has gained a lot of points and a lot of payoffs, but first things first. By the whole game you try to get wounded units to get armor on your Pirates and Ships, ship like Dimun Light Longship might give you real points from it compared to other cards, next payoff from armor might give you Crach an Craite which converts your Pirate’s armor into damage. The deck is really flexible in terms of control, your leader gives you direct damage and with ships on board you can efficiently control opponent’s board. Terror of the Seas, they call it for a reason – depends if you have been keeping it since round 1 but at average you get like 10+ armor. Strength of this deck is positives trades from removing opponent’s units, except this you have also some proactive points from discards, The Mushy Truffle and Sunset Wanderers.

Mulligan:

–

Round 1:

Getting round control for control deck is decent but not necessary, you don’t need to fight for this round, you should be focused on getting armor carryover.

Round 2:

As control deck you should go for long round. If you are being bled  you can try to manipulate Sunset Wanderers with discards.

Round 3:

If it’s long round you get here a lot of positive trades from removing opponent’s stuff. Short round is mostly weak, you might struggle with proactive plays and points itself.

Details

Good against:

Engine decks

Bad against:

Assimilate

Win condition:

Crach, Top-end cards  

Card replacements:

Holger -> Hammond.

Selfwound had been buffed for a long time, however up to last season these changes didn`t make real difference. Sigvald and Knut got huge support and combined with previously powerful cards like Melusine and Cerys finally make Selfwound great again. Decklist contain best SK cards like Fucusya and discard package and was played by Kams (with succeses! during last qualifications. There are different version of Selfwound on ladder so we present this one, which have proven that is powerful. Sigfrida`s Rite can be played twice and Melusine let you play another card from graveyard, what provide unique flexibility.

Gameplan

Mulligan:

You are looking for a Melusine (depending on matchup you might need defender as well) and discard package, at least one bronze cultist to reactivate Melusine`s order is nice as well. Mulligan Cerys.

Round 1:

ITry to set Melusine, sometimes you ought to play defender in order to protect her from opponents Invocation or Korathi.

Round 2:

In some matchups you want to bleed opponent, especially when you have opportunity to play Melusine in a short round, cards like Vildkaarl let you make fastly huge tempo during the bleed.

Round 3:

You have big chance both in long and short round with powerful Sigvald( who can be buffed with mardroeme + Knut combo.

Details

Good against:

Allumni

Bad against:

Assimilation

Win condition:

Knut + Sigvald, Melusine  

Card replacements:

Nope.

Good old Hyperthin gains some additional power with best boy Knickers and Roach which have been buffed. This midrange list is scary in round 2 as well as in round 3. Combo with Snowdrop and Leader gives us a lot of points and thins which is the most important. The whole strategy is to thin between rounds to have a total of 1 card in round three which is Imperial Golem and then play reveal cards like Xarthisius etc. The deck contains control tools like Alba’s Cavalry, Heatwave or Ivar if included (he can be game-changing).
Your gameplan can be interrupted by other Nilfgaard decks by playing Vilgefortz from Double Cross and Artaud or other deck manipulating cards in other decks.

Gameplan

Mulligan:

Knickers, Roach, Reveal cards in Round 1 and 2

Round 1:

You don’t need to fight for round control, you can simply play three cards and pass. You would like to play thinning cards here.

Round 2:

You can try to shorten the round to make your reveals more powerful against the opponent’s cards (like salary and inflation) or you can tempo pass after playing Snowdrop and Leader. If you are being bled you should hold Snowdrop and Leader which is your bargaining chip. Doadrick can help you with consistency and to put back undesirable reveal cards, bricks etc.

Round 3:

Reveal cards should give you an enormous amount of points, but you need to be watch out for your units because in the short round you might struggle with playing around tall punishes.

Details

Good against:

Assimilate, Alumni

Bad against:

Syndicate, Control decks, Vampires

Win condition:

Reveal cards, Snowdrop + Leader

Card replacements:

Roach, x2 Alba and Assasination > Ivar, x2 Impera Brigade, Tourney Joust.

Changes to the entire Siege Engine archetype as well as a few support cards have seen Siege Engines as a competitively viable archetype this meta. While it is arguable if the pure Siege Engines are better than the mages hybrid version, there is no denying that they have the best board wiping tools in the game right now. It is a bit difficult to pilot as key cards like Henselt, Raffards Vengeance and Siege are not tutorable making it highly draw dependent.

Gameplan

Mulligan:

You want to search for the aforementioned 3 key cards of the deck to make you decision easier.

Round 1:

If played correctly and usually on blue coin you tend to win round 1 pretty easily without committing too many resources. A few basic Siege engines and possibly Henselt are more than enough to do the job. On red coin Henselt is usually a guaranteed win on even (unless  in a mirror matchup as the going first advantage counts heavily in the matchup).

Round 2:

This is one of the best decks to push for a 2-0 in a medium to long round 2 as the mass removal provided by Siege and the warfare cards ensures the opponent’s board is wiped out. It is also very versatile in defending a bleed. Be mindful, however, that a mirror match can end up with you getting 2-0ed if the opponent resolves the Siege scenario before you.

Round 3:

This is similar to R2 where a long R3 with going first is preferred to lay the scenario down and see how it goes. Barring Trollolo and buffed up units from AA, there is nothing that offers the opponent’s tall removal cards any value. The gameplan is highly susceptible to the scenario being heatwaved (the round is still winnable but much more difficult) and muzzle on one of the high value siege engines.

Matchups

Mirror:

Mirrors in NR hugely favour going first. However Siege Engine mirrors come down to who gets to resolve the Siege scenario first. The general game plan is to win R1 and resolve the scenario R2 where depending on your opponent’s draws, you can downright win the game in a 2-0 or be very favoured in a shortish R3. The absolute key cards for dealing with mirrors are Henselt for tempo and the duelists as they can get rid of the high value siege engines or a reinforced ballista played from AA.

Monsters:

Generally a lack of control tools in typical monsters decks makes Monsters one of the most favoured matchups for this deck on either coin.

Scoia’tael:

Although not seeing much play on the ladder the unitless and control heavy versions of ST could be tricky matchups depending on coin. Nature’s Gift, however is usually favoured.

Nilfgaard:

This deck in my experience is surprisingly resilient to Nilfgaards usual superiority over Northern Realms’ decks. However a Nilfgaard deck playing lock heavy cards like Alba Armoured Cavalry and van Moorlehem Hunter can pose a few problems.

Skellige:

By far the worst matchup for Siege Engines especially against the Pirate and self wound archetypes. Self wound is hands down the worst matchup for Siege engines  on either coin.

Syndicate:

This is matchup where skill is required the most as reading round length and getting out the opponents keycards. Though winning a long R3 is possible, it depends on a lot of factors as SY has probably the best mass removal tools to deal with the siege engine overload. Getting rid of Whoreson’s Freakshow or baiting him out in R1 are your best bet to have a good match but even then it depends on a lot of things going your way.

Details

Good against:

Symbiosis, Assimilate, Mill, any Monsters deck

Bad against:

Pirates (esp R2 onwards with all the armour), Self Wound, Lock heavy NG and any full power SY deck

Win condition:

Henselt into Raffards with Siege Master in hand plays for insane tempo with a leader charge. The win condition is usually a full board wipe of the opponent after resolving  Siege and chipping away at any remaining units left and generating an insane finisher in trollolo if he sticks.

Card replacements:

The 10p slot is quite flexible in the Devotion build.

Prince Anseis → Queen Adalia, Bloody Baron

For a non Devo version

Muzzle and or Heatwave in the 10p slots

and dont forget to remove Kerack Marines Reinforcements → Margarita Laux-Antille