Metagame Minute: Skirmish Season 11, 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!

That's a wrap on Week 3 and just when you thought it would be a Runeblade Renaissance repeat, April Fools! Starvo and Verdance topple the tall poppies! However, Chane and Aurora still retained silver in the final week, so I wouldn't discount them for the next Skirmish Season.

Looks like everyone survived the chopping block in Blitz, but next time players will almost certainly come prepared so it might be curtains for some of our arcane acquaintances. The domineering presence of Chane in Living Legend has formed the re-emergence of Tales of Aria superstars Briar and Lexi, who are really well equipped to disrupt, defend , or even race Rathe's Shadow Runeblade overlord.

Let's take a look at some cool decks from Week 3...

Green Pony Club

I promised you Verdance... the people delivered Verdance! Wizardry is back in a big way (with a little help from some top of the line gardening equipment). Verdance likes to turbo through her deck in order to reach two copies of Rampant Growth // Life, pop off any and all life gain effects she has on board, then fetch back a Rampant Growth // Life with Plume of Evergrowth, amping to absolutely absurd amounts!

This combo is so powerful that we're not even seeing many Verdance decklists running the notorious Crown of Seeds! What we do have is a flexible deck that can play the long game with 2-card 6-arcane bursts using 1-cost spells and Waning Moon, or the fast game with whatever you manage to draw and play with Storm Striders, punishing decks for drawing hands of high impact reds. In order to stay alive versus the likes of Aurora, beefy equipment like Crown of Providence and Blade Beckoner Gauntlet can cushion the blow, while Poison the Well provides a critical counterplay in the mirror match.

April Foolios!

SIKE... no Living Legend decklist this week. I'm doing a second Blitz deck and there's nothing you can do to stop me. Okay hear me out, we could look at a Starvo or Dromai list, or one of the anti-Chane decks, or we could look at this solo Count Your Blessings Oscilio list that managed to secure a win this week! CYB has struggled to perform well in Blitz due to the fast games preventing the number in graveyard from stacking to a relevant amount quickly enough, but there's something beautiful about discarding a CYB that came up at the wrong time and drawing a big burn spell or blocking card.

Don't let the CYB's fool you, this can still very much be an aggressive deck, utilising lots of go again attacks like Enlightened Strike and Scar for a Scar, robbing the opponent's hand before using Storm Striders to whip them with arcane damage on the next turn while they have little to no cards in hand. This is a very calculated and innovative build, using a very small amount of Lightning cards, and appears to be very targeted at a Wizard heavy meta. Big props!

We hope you enjoyed Skirmish Season 11, Culling fools to your heart's desire, riding the Lightning, flinging copious amounts of arcane at the opponent's face, and just generally having a blast!