May 1, 2018
This deck is designed to deal huge amounts of damage to the opponent, using the Suntop Monastery to boost solar action cards and combos, while using gravity and lunar cards to punish your opponent, gain card advantage and protect yourself.
Hero: Constella
Combos
Black Hole
Anti-Gravity Field
Rippling Flare
Gravity Bubble
Eclipse
Action Cards
x3 Suntop Monastery
x2 Sun Beacon
x2 Mageship
x2 Astral Priest
x1 Mirror Beast
x3 Shapeshifter
x2 Yikona Tactician
x2 Yikona Oracle
x2 Lunatic
x2 Dusk Feeder
x1 Subjugator
x3 Reality Twister
x3 Pathfinder
x2 Spectral Guide
At the core of this deck are two action cards: Suntop Monastery and Reality Twister, these two complement each other so well. The Suntop Monastery increases the damage of your Solar cards by 2 when the last discarded card is Lunar while Reality Twister means that that is always the case. With such a potent combo this deck needs the full complement of 3 of each giving 12 guaranteed turns of up to 6 extra damage from each solar card in your hand.
Astral Priest leaps to mind first – 3 damage, increased to 6 if the last discarded card is Lunar, seems tailor made to take advantage of the above combo, giving you up to 12 damage off one attack, this could get brutal. As the standard attack card of this deck it was chosen above the more vanilla Chimchu Militant which is just a straight 5 damage.
Mirror Beast – this card is an absolute nightmare for your opponent, 3 damage and if the last discarded card is Gravity, it goes straight back into your hand. This beast coupled with the Monastery/Twister combo means at least 5 damage and the card always comes back to your hand. Four turns of this and you have taken 20 life from your opponent, without you actually losing any cards from you hand.
Sun Beacon – the Sun Beacon is a very powerful card, but a double-edged sword – you get 5 healing and deal 4 damage but you have to draw and discard the top card of your deck. This could backfire badly in the early game, losing a critical card to the discard pile, but late game, it could keep you from the brink and take your opponent closer to death. The healing the Beacon gives you remains the same but have enough Monasteries out and you could be looking at up to 10 damage, enough to swing the game in your favour at a critical moment.
But which buff? There are two solar buffs that could be used in this deck, Mageship and Dawn Stalker, the Mageship if faster but doesn’t have the damage potential that the Stalker can generate, the decision is up to you which one to go for, be wary though a keen opponent is more likely to debuff a Stalker for fear of its innate damage potential.
Astral is all about control when it comes to dealing with your opponent, there are a number of cards in the order which can prevent your opponent from performing vital actions in the game, Subjugators stop the opponent from attacking – for 2 turns! Paralysis Bug’s can stop the player drawing cards and playing defend cards, the Full Moon combo can stop the opponent from playing combos. Added to these cards is the Lunatic which is there to stop players thinking about playing buffs and if they forget dealing 2 damage to them when they do.
As this deck is more about damage and less about the control aspect of Astral, the following cards have been chosen – the Subjugator and the Lunatic, the Subjugator should be used when needed, such as the turn a player deploys a Storm Shaman or Colossi Ritual, this stops the opponent from using the buff to its greatest effect. Having 2 Lunatics lying in wait on the board will cause the opponent to either stop playing buffs or regret playing the one they just had.
Pathfinders are there to take care of any unwanted buffs your opponent has in the way, while a Twister is out, you will always be able to remove 2 buffs from the board instead of just one.
Card advantage, damage reduction and healing. The rest of the deck should be made up of cards which give you an edge over the opponent. Yikona Oracle for some damage reduction should be a must, while slower than cards from other orders, the damage reduction is a solid 3 for 3 out of the 4 turns.
Healing cards like Dusk Feeder and Yikona Tactician supply a solid amount of healing which is boosted by the Twister in the case of the Feeder and gives you another action from the Tactician, both are a must for this deck.
Spectral Guides are great buffs for early game card advantage, allowing you to draw an extra 5 cards over 3 turns, the best way to dig the Twisters and Monasteries out of your deck early. The other way you can do this is with the Shapeshifter. The Shapeshifter is a super card, card draw as well as damage or healing (or both) if the card is from one of the other elements, I have a particular fondness for this card and try to have a full set in the deck.
There is really only one hero that is perfect for this deck – Constella. Constella’s ability is not that interesting, being one shared with a number of other heroes. She doesn’t even have that much starting health, only 28, so why is she perfect?
The answer lies in her elemental superiority, both Solar and Gravity, this is a dream for this deck an will allow you to get the most out of the damage and the card advantage that this deck can offer. Early game, play a Spectral Guide which draws a Reality Twister out of the deck, Constella allows you to play that one as well. Late game you have 2 Monasteries and a Twister out, Constella allows you to play both an Astral Priest for 10 damage and a Mirror Beast for 7 and get the Mirror Beast back in your hand. Its this flexibility that makes it so powerful.
The Combos in this deck are there to be explosive. Black Hole and Gravity Bubble deal a ton of damage (boosted by the Monasteries you have out) and either get rid of your opponents buffs or cause them to expire quicker. Rippling Flare is a great damage dealer in multiplayer for a relatively cheap price, again this can be boosted by the Monasteries you have out. The last two are not as powerful be still pretty useful, Anti-Gravity Field has the potential to deal 14 damage while giving you card draw and fulfilling the requirements of the Monasteries and Mirror Beasts when it hits the discard pile and last but not least Eclipse for a bit of healing (always useful) and removing cards from your opponent’s hand.
This deck is pretty versatile, offering the player a huge amount of damage potential and backing it up with card advantage and quite a bit of staying power, works well in both 1v1 and multiplayer conditions and should be able to take out the most hardy decks that are out there.