From zero… to your first eighty cards!
Pablo Pintor breaks down his competitive Pleiades, Superstar Classic Constructed decklist, complete with sideboard and matchup tips. When a new hero hits the track, the pros get you up to speed with Zero to Eighty!
Instants, powerful attacks, new mechanics, massive turns, and incredibly tricky plays – Pleiades is easily the most interesting thing to happen to the Guardian class since Bravo, Star of the Show, and I couldn’t be happier that Legend Story Studios has chosen me to write this article on one of the newest additions of my favorite class, so follow along as we discuss my current decklist and the choices behind it!
Building a deck from scratch is not an easy feat, and Pleiades has that mix where she’s not all that different to other Guardians, but her gameplan is different enough that you cannot build her as we have been doing with other Guardians for years.
In this article I will focus on a midrange build, aiming at trading value efficiently with your opponent, while also being able to set up quite big turns. This does not mean other builds are not viable. I suspect there has to be something in playing a higher number of auras of suspense, Moment Maker, and trying to abuse Standing Ovation. Or maybe you want to explore a different number of blues. Never stop exploring a hero pool and decklists, it’s always surprising to me how much some decks can evolve in just a few weeks!
Pleiades is the answer to every Guardian player who’s ever wished for a dedicated aura user in the class, but if you believe that’s all Pleiades is good at, you are in for a surprise! The combination of the solid Guardian pool with the explosive Revered pool is nothing to scoff at, but this deck is all about chaining different cards together to perform incredibly efficient plays. Having access to instant auras gives you a flexibility never seen before in Guardian, enabling some surprising tricks, a way to always convert your hand, and a much easier time setting up big turns. And they all have block value!
Pleiades’ ability is both a way to ensure you can set up massive turns (manipulating the suspense counter on your auras to make them go off in the same turn), and a way to instantly convert some of your bigger auras, while maintaining passive effects from your 0-cost auras.
The second part of her ability, linked to Revered cards that cause the crowd to cheer you, grants you access to the powerful Confidence token, to ensure your big attacks are going to hit, and their disruptive effects are going to matter. Veteran players might see similarities between Confidence and the good old dominate keyword, but I tend to like Confidence better, as it limits the amount of equipment your opponent can throw in front of your big attacks to try and stop its on-hit.
As I mentioned in my last Zero to Eighty article, I feel more comfortable building a new decklist when I have a clear picture of what I want to be doing in my games and how I want it to happen. That means that I need to identify the cards that allow me to do the thing I want to do (core cards) and then start building the rest of the deck around them, either boosting their strengths, or shoring up their weaknesses. There’s a catch in this specific Pleiades scenario – we have a highly synergistic deck in our hands, so a lot of these cards and their evaluations will be intertwined.
Let’s jump (JUMP!) into the discussion of these picks.
CARD CHOICES
NOTHING COMPARES 2 U
Before we talk about any other card, we have to talk about the most important one in the deck, the humble What Happens Next?
Why is it so important? Sure, having an additional resource each turn seems good but surely it isn’t that big right? That’s also what I thought when I first saw the card, but after a few games it turned out to be a complete powerhouse. As this deck is full of instants, you can actually use its ability both on your turn and on your opponent’s turn, making it so that you are effectively getting 2 resources per cycle. That already sounds very powerful, but what if you could keep it around forever thanks to Pleiades’ ability?
This deck is at its strongest when you have this aura in play, and that’s why I made the decision of also playing Imposing Visage, to double our chances of drawing it on the first turn!
WE WILL ROCK YOU
We are packing quite the number of buffing auras in this deck, some of them in two different colors!
This is the bread and butter that we will use to generate big attacks to trade hits with our opponent. They all function similarly with the exception of The Suspense is Killing Me, which is both another aura to stock suspense counters in if you haven’t found What Happens Next?, another target for Cries of Encore, and a pretty neat combat trick your opponent has to respect if they exactly defend one of your on-hits, all around a very solid card for a blue!
We do have a bit of an oddball here as well, In the Palm of Your Hand. You remember how Flesh and Blood used to have cards that allowed you to draw two cards and almost all of them got banned? Well, Guardian just received its own modified “tome”! Superb card that you will always be happy to see in your hand, and one that has quite the synergy with Thespian Charm. When you draw one of the two pieces of this mini combo, just put it in the arsenal (where they will be pretty safe thanks to being instants) and wait for the other one, making sure you have either What Happens Next? or Fyendal’s Spring Tunic, to replay the aura after bouncing it and drawing!
Thespian serves as a way to bounce one of your auras, triggering its effects, and generating a Confidence token for next turn, so we can count it as an additional aura and thus I have decided to add it to the aura package. You can also do tricky things with Cries of Encore even if you are ahead on life!
Last but not least we have a single copy of both Up on a Pedestal and Superstar, to have more options to get back with Cries of Encore, and to be able to loop Cries of Encore and Up on a Pedestal if needed in fatigue oriented matchups.
ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST
We have already seen how we set up our auras, but how do we use them?
Pleiades features some of the best attacks I have seen in any Guardian deck, with the addition of Cries of Encore and the much awaited Boulder Drop (red). They have great rates, great on-hit effects, and once they receive strength from your auras, they are very difficult to stop!
I want to give a special shoutout to Cries of Encore, amazing rate on an easy to activate condition, gives you a Confidence token, and has a massive on-hit, one of the standout cards of the deck.
We are also featuring good old Command and Conquer, my favorite card, and a way to push damage into the most defensive decks, as well as Thump, to have another disruption piece that combos with Tunic and/or What Happens Next?
It’s also relevant that this deck wants to run attacks that can be played pitching a single blue, as our desired gameplan is playing an aura in our opponent’s turn, moving a suspense counter from that aura to What Happens Next?, then swinging an attack (buffed by the aura we played), pitching a single card. Clean, efficient, deadly.
SINGIN’ the blues
Time to talk about resource cards!
Nothing surprising besides cards we have already mentioned, most of these are very good second cycle cards to help us close games if we ever get that far into the deck, and a healthy amount of 8-power cards to both deal with phantasm and win clashes. Triggering Standing Ovation won’t be an easy task but it could yield a huge payoff once we hit our pitch stack.
And of course – Tear Asunder!
There’s another card I want to mention here – Turning Point. Another one of the Revered bombs, this card usually offers 5 points of defending value and the huge Confidence token, making quite the impact every time you draw one. As you have already seen in Cries of Encore, being behind on life total is important for the Revered talent, so don’t be afraid to take your time setting up and wait to use your equipment to defend if you can!
Your Latest trick
Does your deck have a healthy amount of blues, Command and Conquer, and Fyendal’s Spring Tunic? Then you should always consider having some number of Pummels! Not only does Pummel have quite a good synergy with What Happens Next?, it also keeps your opponent guessing – is it a Pummel or an aura of suspense?
Another brick in the wall
I left the defense reactions last for a good reason – the more synergistic your deck is, the less you can afford to play good Generic cards. This deck thrives on playing auras and attacks and does not bother so much with defending as other Guardians, so running the full package of defense reactions is not actually that great, and we are also running pretty thin on spots for red cards.
That being said, having some defense reactions makes certain matchups much better, so for those precious spots dedicated to them I have chosen the trustful Sink Below (fixing hands since 2019), and made the tech call to add Hold the Line, as I think Kayo, Armed and Dangerous is going to be a menace in the upcoming metagame.
EQUIPMENT
STAYIN’ ALIVE
One of the best parts of being a Guardian? Having access to your great defensive equipment options. But also, the Revered trait allows Pleiades to solve the only dent in the mighty Guardian armor set – leg equipment options!
Fyendal’s Spring Tunic, Steelbraid Buckler, and Titan’s Fist need no introduction, and as I have mentioned this is not a Moment Maker build, so all three of these equipment are pretty obvious and powerful additions.
The Pleiades Armory Deck brought us some very interesting pieces to play with in the other equipment slots:
- Tiara of Suspense’s main use is to fuel another suspense counter to What Happens Next?, while also defending for 2, but you can use it to set up a big turn where several auras pop if the situation demands!
- Attention Grabbers is the most straightforward one, allowing you to defend for 3 with a single piece of equipment (which is huge) and being able to remove the last counter of In the Palm of Your Hand to make better defending decisions during the rest of the turn, or making it so the auras you just played leave the game at the same time.
- Boots to the Boards is not only a 2-defense temper leg piece without a downside, it actually has a pretty important textbox. This allows you to use the floating resources you get while playing an aura in your opponent’s turn and convert them to defensive value for the next turn. Just remember that auras are instants and they do not get buffed by Toughness tokens!
- Virtuoso Bodice is a great Fyendal’s Spring Tunic replacement for short, explosive games, while offering 2-defense.
Thanks to Arcane Lantern it is very easy to fit Arcane Barrier 3 in our deck to respect the crafty Wizards, usually a very tough matchup for Guardians. That gives us enough space to also include a cheeky Spellvoid 1 against Kano.
Finally, Balance of Justice is there to be used against decks that we know are going to trigger its condition during the course of the game (like Gravy Bones).
SIDEBOARDING
CH-CH-CH-CHANGES
As always, if you are not trying to fatigue or afraid of being fatigued yourself, I highly recommend sticking to 60 cards in every matchup, to increase chances of drawing our most important cards as soon as possible.
The following cards are in my inventory, everything else makes up the base 60:
- 3x Crush the Weak
- 3x Sink Below
- 2x Hold the Line
- Balance of Justice
- Virtuoso Bodice
- Anti-arcane equipment
Thespian Charm should be swapped out for Sink Below if Confidence tokens are not going to be relevant during the game.
Balance of Justice and Hold the Line will replace Tiara of Suspense and any two blues when they are relevant.
Thump can be changed for Crush the Weak when your opponent has a ton of 3-power attacks.
Arcane Lantern is great against Runeblades, you can bring out the full suite of Arcane Barrier against Wizards, as well as Spell Fray Tiara against Kano.
Metagame position
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
I expect Pleiades to perform well right out the gate in this upcoming metagame, as her gameplan works pretty well against some decks that I think will be on top, like Kayo and Gravy Bones. Of course, not everything is going to be perfect, and Verdance is probably going to be quite a difficult matchup, but Pleiades is a flexible enough hero to adapt, if needed. As this deck is so fun and rewarding to play, it will not be a surprise if Pleiades is pretty popular, so we will soon see a ton of different ideas and builds!
get in the ring!
GO YOUR OWN WAY
I hope learning Pleiades is as fun for you as it was for me! And it would be a great honor if you feel inspired to brew your own Pleiades deck or you want to play some games with mine. Let me know how it goes!
Huge thanks to the Sunflower Samurais for helping me test even the most absurd builds and hearing me talk endlessly about the most insignificant changes, as well as to all the people that have been discussing this hero with me (too many to mention), you guys rock!
See you soon on the gaming tables!
