Classic: Wyrm Deadzone

Summary

​Wyrm Deadzone: A Reason Not to Play Skin of the Hellbound
Deck and description by OG Mandarin; my additions in italics.
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This is an aggro-control Wyrm deck that uses Lunar Eclipse and Deadzone to pave the way for high-damage combat actions. While your Deadzone is in play, you can’t use gifts or fetish equipment but you have protection against gifts like Eye of the Cobra, Whelp Body, Master of the Pack, Take the True Form and “freeze” gifts like True Fear, Body Wrack, and Distractions. Lunar Eclipse is an extra layer of control and can also stop a lot of your opponent’s gift cancelling (if they are playing gift cancelling with the Theurge requirement).

Deadzone was a big tournament card back in the day but I took more notice of it recently after seeing a guy from my local play group – Empty Apathy - use it in a control-based Gaia deck. Deadzone prevents your characters from using gifts so this deck uses Mage of the Celestial Chorus to play Body Wrack, Fetish Sundering, Distractions and Air of Authority. The other victims can each play some of these gifts and are there as backup for Mage.

There are two areas of dyssynergy here: (1) Glade Child will be removed by Mage of Celestial Chorus at the end of turn, so only drop her if you have a clear path to killing her same turn, or if you haven’t drawn a Mage yet. (2) Lunar Eclipse will prevent Angus and Wyldkin from using Distractions so consider holding onto Lunar Eclipse for a turn if you haven’t drawn Mage yet and want to fire one off. Mage can play Distractions using the Stargazers requirement so Lunar Eclipse doesn’t pose a problem for him. When you don’t need Mage, or if you have two, you can kill it for victory points.

Playing the deck is very simple: Get out the Beast of War totem to enable high rage combat action cards and use your victims to play your limited range of gifts. You don’t need to land many attacks so this deck can get away with playing a high percentage of dodges. You have good card economy here so the card disadvantage brought by Feint is less of a problem. The two Feints will help you slip around your opponent’s dodges or land a Disarm. Block and Strike is a nice counter for first round Suprise Attack and goes well with Head Wound, Mangle, Spine Crushed, Entrail Rend, Heart Breaker, or Rent Asunder.

If you need to bail yourself out of a combat gone wrong, you have your two Umbral Escapes. With all the high damage cards you play, Skin of the Hellbound is an obvious problem for this deck. If they drop Skin, you want to blow it up with Fetish Sundering (preferably during combat) or try to break them down the old-fashioned waying using Disarm. You’re going to need good draws to make Disarm work, probably alongside a Frenzy, Feint, and even a Bodywrack. Good news is that Disarm can’t be dodged, so you just want to make sure you don’t eat a Mangle or Headwound when you throw it out.

In a game full of cheesy cards, Skin of the Hellbound may be the cheesiest - the most able to collapse an outsized portion of the meta. Probably designed to curtail “champion style” decks that steamroll with high damage and good card economy (like this deck), Skin (in theory) tipped the meta more in favor of low-rage pack attack decks. When Skin is combined with characters like Tsannik, mass removal like Breath of the Defiled, in addition to the usual range of freeze cards and combat enders, it can become oppressive and make games stretch on a very long time. Unless the opponent plays low-rage combat cards, they will have to use Beast Mind or Redemption to deal with Skin, or if they’re playing Wyrm, they can play Fetish Sundering. Sticky Paws might also work. Skin has answers but I’ve seen it discourage players at the mid-level who weren’t prepared for it.

Characters

Characters

• 1x Count Vladimir Rustovich
• 1x Zhyzhak
• 1x Allonzo Montoya
• ​1x Fanthane Bloodjaw

Sept (40 cards)

• 3x Sneak Attack
• 1x Kids Love Arson
• 1x Legal Chicanery
• 3x Beast-of-War
• 3x Iron Will
• 3x Lunar Eclipse
• 2x Red Alert
• 1x Spirit Backlash
• 3x Visit from the White Father
• 1x Grrash Tak'hyrrr
• 1x Trinity Hive Caern
• 3x Dead Zone
• 1x The Naysayer's Hovel
• 1x Trinity Hive Caern
• 1x Distractions
• 2x Body Wrack
• 2x Fetish Sundering
• 1x Air of Authority
• 1x Joseph Herlech
• 1x Angus the White Howler
• 1x Glade Child
• 3x Mage of the Celestial Chorus
• 1x Wyldkin Kami

There are very few cards in this deck which require keywords within the pack to play (Beast-of-War being the main one). Although this deck intends to fight Victims, having the Iron Will covers either alphas stepping in or (more likely) the victims playing gifts back. Kids Love Arson can have a second benefit of taking your character out of the game in a sticky situation. Note that there is only one other combat ended in sept, Air of Authority.

Combat (30 cards)

• 1x Battle Fervor
• 2x Frenzy
• 1x Block and Strike
• 1x Dodge
• 2x Evasion
• 2x Fancy Footwork
• 2x Disarm
• 2x Feint
• 2x Umbral Escape
• 1x Surprise Attack
• 2x Head Wound
• 2x Maim
• 2x Mangle
• 2x Spine Crushed
• 2x Entrail Rend
• 2x Heart Breaker
• 2x Rent Asunder

What's noticeable is how many of the combat actions require crinos form, and how many of them can take out a victim in a single blow. Rage on!

Substitutions

I like Maim because it locks people into combat, but you can also replace it with Massive Wound. If you don’t have Fancy Footwork you can replace that with an extra Dodge, Block and Strike, or Surprise Attack. ​​

​For this deck, I was glad to explore a different Wyrm strategy. Samuel Herlech isn’t necessary but he helps cut through annoying realms like Battlefield, Summer Country, and Wolfhome, allowing your big characters to rampage. If you don’t have Samuel, just add in an extra Red Alert, Wyldkin Kami, or a Subjugation of Gaia.

If using the Least Wanted version of Visit, you might find Checking the Classified works better for the deck. You could also reduce the duplication of the combat deck to bring it down to 20 cards.