April 26th Webcam Premier Top 8 Breakdown
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The May 17th Webcam premier is just a couple days away (at time of writing) and players of all skill levels are at the grindstone trying to make the perfect brew for the next event, aiming to finish the Moonrise season on top. These last few weeks have been for reflection, carefully poring over every bit of match footage, every decklist and listening in on any discussion to find the latest trends or find an underlooked but well-positioned strategy. As a competitive player, I’ve been spending many hours preparing for the final Moonrise premier on the 17th and have been asked by the wonderful folks at TopElestrals.com to share my process and conclusions with the readers.
Before we dive in, I’d first like to walk you all through the three questions that I want to try and answer with my analysis. It doesn’t matter how many graphs or data points you have - if you don’t know what you’re looking for you’ll never be able to draw conclusions deeper than “wow, this line sure is going down” and obviously that’s not very productive!
This article will cover:
-what types of decks and players saw success in the latest premier
-what might change following the introduction of Shattered Stars: Aries
-what kind of deck would be best positioned for the end of Moonrise.
Top 8 - Doomraider
Deck: Twilight Tempo Splashing Earth
Looking at this deck is like looking at a collage of Moonrise’s greatest hits, a deck designed to pay homage to the evolution of the metagame first and play Elestrals second. Unfortunately that’s a fancy way of saying this deck is somewhat confused, being one third early Lunar Aggro (with even the Fun-Of Pharogeist), one third late stage Lunar (the Earth splash is reminiscent of Swolelax’s Dallas list) and the remaining third the breakout success of the April 5th premier, Solar Beatdown. All these mixed gameplans can pretend to work together but lack the cohesion needed to really make it against other topping decks, especially with a side almost exclusively geared toward killing Blizzstrix, which flopped this event hard.
This feels like the deck of a locals legend in concept but the ratios are sound, the only suboptimal choice is 2 Werepup but it’s one I’ve seen enough to not question anymore. I am assuming the 14 card side deck is an error on the play network’s end. The lack of Cryoblast is very interesting as well, but not unheard of. Argo and Helialith mean removing Elestrals isn’t particularly difficult although I would like to see more invoke runes or nexus effects in future builds to remove a Necklace of Harmonia before it becomes a liability.
Doomraider is a skilled player who’s made topcut multiple times and I think with a bit more tuning a Twilight tempo list close to this could take a player of their caliber far but I feel the relatively loose build might have been the factor that cut Doomraider off from a deeper run this time.
Top 8 - DistantCoder
Deck: Lunar Earth Aggro
This one is difficult to talk about at length because it’s been a known quantity since Dallas. 2 full premiers have come and gone now since the debut of the Lunar Earth Aggro deck that people abbreviate to Leggo for reasons beyond me - but Daimax’s problems with deck names is an article for another day. The list piloted by DistantCoder is mostly unchanged since Dallas, with only minor tuning like moving Mosstacean and Poison Tipped Arrow to the side in favor of additional Rummagems and rounding out the counter rune lineup with additional copies of cards like Shield of Achilles. The only criticism I have is the lack of a third copy of Specteris anywhere in the list. Khafmel was public enemy number one going into the premier after Julian’s win on a Solar variant of heal and seeing Spect more often might have been the difference maker in the top 8 match against Ari that ended his run. I believe the rest of the deck is extremely solid and well thought out.
Coder’s an extremely solid player with a long history of performing in Elestrals and it’s no surprise whatsoever that he topped on a deck as solid as he is; however I feel like a little more tuning the deck to beat the expected meta might have resulted in a far deeper run.
Top 8 - Bo
Deck: Photo 5s
He forgot the Synthesis at home. Bo is a player well known for bringing Photosynthesis, the Earth/Solar artifact deck that won him Dallas, however for this event Bo opted to drop the earth package entirely, playing a deck as close to pure Solar as you can get without channeling the iconic Diales 20 Solar spirit deck. Similar to Doomraider’s list I worry there aren’t many ways to get rid of Necklace of Harmonia, but the Cryoblasts in the side do help mitigate this. Not much however, because if Argo resolves there probably isn’t a Cryoblast target aside from Astrabbit - but it’s still better than nothing. A lot of things about this sideboard worry me - I imagine it’s for the heal matchup but Khafmel is an extremely good card and I like it when I draw my good cards often. The third Khafmel being stuck in the side feels like wasted potential. I also find the sided Tsunamis very strange. There wasn’t a whole lot from the previous premier that indicated a Water dominated meta so the only answer would be that it’s somehow bad into a matchup Bo expected a lot of but for the life of me I can’t figure out what that would be. I did reach out to Bo to ask, but never got a reply.
The Combination of Cypromal and Helialith is absurdly nasty, and this deck is able to abuse the best parts of Solar very well while also sticking to a standard 5s strategy. It’s no surprise it made it to top 8 with a player like Bo behind it, although from my perspective I still see room to improve that might have led to the run lasting longer.
Top 8 - Trishula
Deck: Pet Shop Fire
I’ve always had this theory that Fire Nexus has been the best deck from the moment Earthquake got limited. The results don’t quite prove it - yet every single event you can safely bet some flavor of Fire will convert. Here we see the next evolution of Shurit’s top 4 Fire/Lunar Aggro deck from the previous premier (dubbed “Pet Shop”) and it’s beautiful. By shaving down the bulky and unnecessary packages common in fire like Stoke the Forge the deck is able to fit more power cards like Zeus and the Werepup package. This fills in the gaps that Rummacoal and it’s search targets left, like Zeus winning combat and Lycavoid being the greatest nexus bank to ever do it.
For as much as I talk up this list I do have a problem with it - I greatly dislike the 2/2 split on Argo/Necklace. I’ve always been a big supporter of 3 Argo for 2 targets because the odds of you finding all 3 Argo in a game and needing to use all 3 is slim to none, and generally speaking decks that play Argo want to find Argo so cutting back on it feels silly. Besides that one gripe this deck debuts a lot of theory I find myself agreeing with, mainly the idea that expending to draw on turn 1 is suboptimal.
I’m confident Trish could explain it better himself, but consider the following. Expending to draw is a mulligan. You spend spirits for chances at better cards and while this is a justifiable turn 1 for a strong reactive hand, you cede a lot of tempo and spirits. You expend 1, your opponent then develops any guy and chips you down to 18. You have functionally gone second with a mulligan, not first with a keeper. The only counter rune that feels good in this position is Poison Tipped Arrow on Rabbits or similar weenies - but now you’ve lost the extra card and you gave up tempo just to remove a card that usually replaces itself on your opponent’s end! AND you’re down even more spirits too! The math just doesn’t work out unless you’re on a heal strategy, so Pet Shop aims to strike the perfect number of strong turn 1 advantage plays like Smoltuga to emulate expending to draw without giving up on tempo.
Overall this is a very strong list piloted by an even stronger player and I’m excited to see what the next evolution of fire will be, but that’s a discussion for later in this article.
Top 4 - Ari
Deck: Penterror forma de 5s
Another mark on the board for 5s with spice, this time by Penterror’s strongest soldier Ari. It’s good to see that Ari finally realized that Astrabbit is the most jacked aggro tool of all time, since his lists from Dallas only played 2. While he did realize Astrabbit good card I believe there are still key staples missing from this list - namely Earthquake being relegated to the side which could explain the 0-2 loss to SirTractor’s KryoSect deck in top 4.
Earthquake aside, this is a solid list and with one big exception it's very close to my ideal for the next premier (more on that later) and the less standard ratios make a lot of sense when you think about it. 2/2 split on Galaxair/Soarlet is a ratio I quite like in decks without Aeolus. 3 Poison Tipped Arrow with 2 Shield of Achilles looks wrong at first but when you consider how bad a Specteris can be for cards like Hydrake it makes more sense, plus not a lot of cards are able to handle 5s like Soarlet or Specteris under a PTA.
Truthfully I don’t think Penterror is a particularly good ascension line despite this being it’s second top 4 finish in Moonrise, it’s painfully expensive, weak to counter runes and the payoff is only just fine. If I had to guess I’d say this is a case of a player picking a fine enough deck and honing their ability to play that deck so much that they carry the deck rather than the other way around. I’m very interested to see the next iteration of Ari’s list, I’d probably cut the third Cryoblast, a frost spirit and probably a wind spirit as well to fit Earthquake in.
Top 4 - Yrebellion
Deck: Lunar Earth Aggro
This list is almost identical to DistantCoder’s top 8 list and is coming from a solid player from Coder’s local scene, so rather than rewrite what I did before with minor differences I’ll be using this section to highlight the differences in their lists and go over what might have been consequential.
Their maindecks are almost identical, with the only difference being Coder cutting Resting on Your Laurels for a third copy of Shield of Achilles, likely a concession made because of how much and how fast the Lunar Earth deck wants to dump spirits on the board. Coder’s deck includes an extra Water spirit, while Yrebellion opted for an extra Earth. The side is where the biggest difference was, with Coder’s side looking more geared to beat 5s-adjacent strategies compared to the Gnawbie line in Yrebellion’s for beating Blizzstrix.
I think of the 2 maindecks Yrebellion’s is more solid, but the spirit deck and side are better positioned on Coder’s side. 8 Earth spirits is excessive with healing cards like Ambrosia and Scythe of Demeter, and a flexible spirit like Water is worth more than the comfort of easier expend math. Both players are recurring names in topcut so I think it’s safe to say the determining factor for who moved on was just matchups. Yrebellion found themselves against Bo’s Photo deck and won out because of power cards like Equilynx and having more profitable Argos than Bo while Coder found himself staring down the much harder and more explosive Hurricane Penterror matchup.
Runner-up - Me :D
Deck: Drakking
I mentioned this in the deck profile up on the Nauts channel but I picked Drakking because I have locals at 4 on Saturdays and wanted those TP3 packs, unfortunately I’m too skilled for my own good and now we’re here. Similar to Pet Shop this is a culmination of theory I’ve had for a while regarding the cyclical nature of Hurricane and Drakking. You can hear more about that in the profile but the TL;DR is that Drakking is extremely easy to hate out of a format. At any given moment you’re liable to get blown up by any number of sided silver bullets and as such the viability of Drakking is tied not to the strength of the card but how much the playerbase at large fears it. Combine this with a similar cycle for Hurricane and the popularity of Argo being at an all time high and you have the perfect storm brewing for a Drakking sweep.
The final piece of the puzzle was Foamee. It’s really easy to see Specteris everywhere because of Khafmel and write off Foamee decks entirely because your opponent will just leave Foamee alone until they can find Spect - but my time playing with Khafmel has made me realize there were simple play patterns with backrow that let you completely wall Spect and more importantly resolving your key card effects doesn’t actually matter if you can still win through tempo. If you can bait out a power card like Specteris and crack it before it gets out of hand the Foamee still gets value by changing your opponent’s play patterns. Similarly, if your opponent ignores a Foamee and willingly gums up the board you can create complex outplays and leverage player skill to win without resolving the linear gameplan, which is why the Drakking list looked like a 5s deck on stream.
The simple truth is that Drakking is not the win condition, just a threat to gum up boards. If your opponent makes reckless swings you can get to a big 2 drop that wins on its own, if you don’t then the threat of that causes opponents to slow down too much and let the game slip out of their hands. Powerful stuff.
Winner - SirTractor
Deck: KryoSect
Similar to Ari with Penterror, this is a very strong player finding a decent deck and sticking with it for an eternity and getting absurdly good with it. The ratios look absurd with only 6 guys that don’t have some specific gamestate they want to see and a massive 7 ascensions to brick on but the player taking extremely aggressive mulligans and very frequently expending to draw combined with actually wanting to take a lot of damage means those aren’t real problems 90% of the time. This is especially true for SirTractor, who’s been at it with this list for so long that he probably has seen every single gamestate these cards can produce and knows full well how to navigate them optimally through trial and error. I also really love the side plan of boarding into a traditional frost 5s list to beat the common sided options for KryoSect and using burn cards like Eruption to beat out expensive Argo decks.
I really don’t think any analysis I could give would do this deck justice, it’s a work of art that can only truly be understood by its creator, and that’s awesome. I’m really glad SirTractor did so well with this list and I hope to see more KryoSweeps in the future as well. Go Kryoscorch!
LOOKING FORWARD
Now that we know what performed, let’s see what could change these decks or the expected metagame going into the last event of Moonrise. The only new set release is Shattered Stars: Aries and the 4 new champion cards that are in it. Of the 4 only 3 are strong enough to see play in my opinion (sorry Bear fans) and even then I’m personally really down on Warmite - Champion of Hestia without Hestia’s Hearth or Arachne’s Lair and I think Rummacoal - Champion of Hephaestus is just plain bad. However these are cards people are experimenting with and so they should still be in your calculations.
The real heavy hitter is Volcaries - Champion of Hephaestus, who single-handedly reinvents Fire Nexus as we know it and potentially pushes an already consistently topping deck into best deck territory. This card and deck is popular, it’s powerful and it’s easy so I think it’s safe to say the majority of the field will be on this deck, so how do we beat it?
An easy start is Hurricane, Argo can only be activated on attack declaration, so Hurricane beats it cleanly, but that isn’t really enough so let’s look at alternative angles. Traditionally the only artifact Fire ran was Necklace of Harmonia since Hammer of Hephaestus is underwhelming at best and you wanted to be able to use the artifact as a nexus bank for Kindleo. Some Fire Artifact lists have opted for Scythe of Demeter and most have chosen to also play Poisoned Tunic, but Necklace is still the primary artifact.
We can abuse this by using position swapping effects like Eddy or Mudlet to crack Fire’s low defense dudes or force out Scythe at inopportune moments. Taking this further, Water enchanted Elestrals are very well positioned swinging into Argo because of Tsunami. You attack with any beater and your opponent activates Argo. You let them equip Necklace to their Champion and on resolution you flip a Tsunami to force the Elestral with a huge attack buff into its far lower defense stat.
Another easy source of outplays is to leverage stat swaps. For some reason stat swaps break people’s brains so a card like Galaxair can knowledge check your way out of the early rounds extremely easily as people put a Necklace on their Necruffs only to find that your 3 attack still beats their 1/10. Obviously “Hope your opponent doesn’t understand the rules” isn’t a solid strat but it is the kind of out you can play to in sticky spots.
To summarize, I believe the information available shows we want a deck that gets to play Water enchanted beaters, has a density of position and stat swapping effects and gets to use Hurricane. To my knowledge the best deck that fits all those would be TheArchitectz’s top 8 Wind Box list from the Dallas Open with some minor changes to adapt to other meta shifts.
That’s all I have to say about this event, and hopefully next time I do one of these I’ll get it out before the next premier actually happens. Special thank you to my wonderful editor MONO for helping with this article, Cy@