Metagame Minute: Skirmish Season 10, Week 3

Welcome to Metagame Minute, where we tuck into the latest tournament results and discuss tasty trends, saucy highlights, and spicy decklists - all wrapped up in a bite-sized read!

Week 3 of Skirmish is done and dusted, and along with Calling: Chicago, our 2024 Pro Play circuit has finally come to a close. It's been a spectacular ride from start to finish, and we hope you enjoyed all the twists and turns along the way.

Skirmish has reached its third act, and although Viserai gave a rousing performance, he's been upstaged by Everfest's lead actor for the grand finale. Starvo has claimed the title of Skirmish Season Winner for the Living Legend format, along with a showstopping performance at Calling: Chicago.

Blaze claims glory for Volcor in the little league, outpacing the likes of Aurora and Zen to claim the title of Skirmish Season Winner for the Blitz format. But her fiery path of destruction has only just begun, don't take your eyes off this hero when more Blitz events roll around next year.

Today, let's take a look at some top dogs from each format...

The Greatest Showman

After roughly a year of waiting in the wings, Starvo has returned to grace the centre stage once more. The deck still functions how you remember - reveal three elements, win game. But the notorious Guardian has picked up some pretty interesting new tools along the way which serve a variety of purposes other than just fueling his hero ability. One such tool is Electromagnetic Somersault, providing Starvo with many different ways to abuse his attack action cards, whether that's retrieving your attack action to play it again the next turn, defending a relevant on-hit then returning the critical elements to your hand, or even just recycling a popper. Star Struck returning to 3 copies is also a big contributor to Starvo's domination of the format's aggro decks.

Rosetta and Armory Deck Origins: Jarl Vetreiði have really bolstered Starvo's Elemental card pool. This extra dimension has given the big boy many different avenues to utilise his cards when he doesn't draw access to his hero ability. Cards like Fruits of the Forest and Trip the Light Fantastic provide defensive maneuvers, while Jarl's donation of blue 3-defense Ice cards smooth out the defensive drawbacks that come with building such an 'everything-bagel' of a deck. Frozen to Death in particular provides a harsh punishment for the opponent using their equipment to defend a Starvo-fueled attack.

Gotta Hand it to Him

Kayo has performed extremely well this season, proving himself able to go toe to toe with a variety of different decks. In Blitz, bombs like Command and Conquer or hand disruption effects can be a total blowout since the lower life totals don't leave you any legroom to recover. No Fear is an excellent counter to this, protecting your cards and life while still allowing you to crack back at full strength. It's also a very useful way to avoid being caught with non-defenders in hand.

A big reason Kayo can even stand up to aggro decks is his chunky equipment suite, which can soak up a big turn and open up that window to fire off Savage Sash, Bloodrush Bellow, or even just Swing Big with a few Might tokens. Big numbers are the name of the game, and we all know Brutes excel at math. The question is whether he can reliably build to beat Blaze next season, or if a new control deck will surface that forces him to think outside the box. Either way, this deck has come a long way and has reached a super clean and optimised stage.

Thanks for sticking with us through 2024, and we hope you all enjoyed Skirmish Season 10! A big congratulations to all our winners. For fans of Living Legend who are hungry for more, check out the Decklists page to see what players brought to Calling: Chicago. That's all for now, catch you next time!