Intro
With the new Gods Unchained expansion, Mortal Judgement, around the corner, the meta is going to drastically change and new decks will emerge. Mortal Judgement has tons of new cards, creating never before seen deck types for each god. Let’s look at the spoiled cards, what decks/strategies/tribes are being supported, and what might be the next meta threat.
You can see the entire Mortal Judgement card set at:
https://blog.godsunchained.com/2022/04/08/mortal-judgement-the-set/
And you can check out @copperpitch’s video to learn about the new keywords Echo, Empower, and Tempt Fate.
Nature
Nature has one new main deck strategy from MJ, Heal Nature, and a handful of other Wild and Amazon cards to supplement those tribes. Heal Nature is the focus of MJ with most cards having regen or heal effects. The Wild and Amazon decks are largely the same with the new cards.
Heal Nature
The strategy of Heal Nature is to get and maintain board control through playing sticky high-health creatures with regen and healing them to get strong on-heal effects.
The deck is going to be strong against board-based decks since you can make favorable trades with your sticky creatures. It’s worse against control since there won’t be an easy way to damage your creatures and get the heal since control is light on creatures and usually removes creatures in 1 hit.
Most of the healing will come from creatures regening health at the end of turn, but this needs your creatures to be damaged first. Injured Sprout gets damaged on summoning, so it guaranteed regens health and proc your heal effects. There are a handful of cards that heal your creatures outside of regen. Plan the Hunt heals your creatures and hides them so they’ll live to the next turn to attack and regen. Forrestheart Dryad heals creatures after they attack, so you don’t need to rely on regen creatures. United Reinforcements is a big buff spell for Wild and Amazon creatures that can heal. The Flourish god power is a source of healing if you choose to run it. Healing 1 health for 1 mana is weak, but having a reliable and cheap source of healing might be worth it.
Most of your heal payoffs/on-heal effects come from your 3 legendaries, so Heal Nature won’t be a budget deck. It’s a little strange that there are no other creatures outside of the legendaries that have on-heal effects, then again on-heal effects are pretty rare only seen in Light before. Dagan gives a +1/+1 buff to a creature when is healed. Dalia summons an Injured Sprout when a friendly creature is healed so you can proc your heal effects again at the end of the turn with the sprout. Silkspite summons a 1/1 with deadly that attacks a random valid target on roar and heal so you can clear the board easily.
Some cards like Dagan and Silkspite don’t say “friendly creature” so they will trigger on your opponent’s creature healing too. In Dagan’s case, this is bad since you’re going to buff your opponent’s creature, while Silkspite is good, triggering to summon a 1/1 and attack. Another example is High Thaumaturge and Sern, which draw a card when any creature is healed. So keep in mind what creatures are on board when you are facing an opponent who has regen creatures or can heal creatures.
Here is a sample decklist for Heal Nature.
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Amazon Nature
Although Amazons weren’t a focus of MJ, the couple of new Amazon cards might push Amazons into the meta. The new Amazons fill out the tribe and give them some missing tools. Sword Breaker Sage is relic removal you can use twice. Barksworn Hunter is an Underbrush Boar that can hit the face so you can board control or push face damage on an empty board. Druid of the Cycle obliterates a card from the void so you can deal with void cards. Warrior of Paradise gives you a Blitz creature and a strength buff.
The game plan is still the same with Amazon, get early board control, then dominate the game with Amazon buffs. You can read more about the Amazon deck here: @meltysquid/amazon-onslaught-gods-unchained-amazon-deck-pre-mortal-judgement
Here’s a sample Amazon deck using some of the new Amazons.
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Wild Nature
The rest of the cards are all Wild cards. Most of them don’t stand out that much. Lupine Wayfarer is strong, the blitz is almost always live with a big 5/5 body and Tempt Fate can be useful. Hibernating Ursine and Albino Hydra won’t see play in decks, but we can get them off of Valewarden Minotaur, so you have a 1/10 chance to sneak out a lethal with Hydra. Pack Succession is going to be a big rng nature card. You can high roll a First Phoenix to get an egg and phoenix back or low roll a Tainted Treant. The average summon is going to be decent since it’s effectively a 5 mana creature with blitz.
Wild Nature is mostly the same deck with the new cards, overwhelm them with big wild creatures and close out the game with big buffs. The 5 mana slot has even more competition with Lupine Wayfarer and Pack Succession.
Here’s a sample Wild Nature deck.
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