When it comes to the Modern Champion meta, one of the strongest plays out there is actually Cryptic with Commander Slade, Jicarilla the Rime and Daarg Deadblast with various combinations of Daigendark Surveyor and Yaba's Pickle.
Today I would like to explore one of my favorite variations of this lineup and illustrate it against another very popular line up.
The Cryptic summoner combined with Commander Slade is a speed meta play, you want to speed up your team as much as possible while slowing down the opposing team as much as possible.
The downside of this pure meta play is that it doesn't have much damage outside the Commander Slade, so I like to sacrifice one position to a major damage dealer instead of speed up slow down or healing monster.
Cryptic is my summoner of choice for this play, there is also an option of playing Elias Max Pruitt, but then it is a completely different lineup and I believe that this lineup is actually the stronger one of the two due to Cryptic nerfing the whole team by minus one in speed and adding Blind that makes the chances of the opponent missing go up by fifteen percent.
This particular flavor of the speed play always features Commander Slade as the main tank and one of the main damage dealers. This rare card delivers five speed, seven shield, ten points and six speed for ten mana points as its baseline specs.
It also comes with a very nice set of abilities:
Enfeeble that nerfs the opponent's melee attack after as successful strike. Dodge which is extremely important as it increases the chances of an opponent missing by twenty five percent. Deflect which protects Commander Slade from Corrosive Ward, Magic Reflect, Thorns, Return Fire and Blast Splash damage.
This strategy is all about Making Commander Slade practically un-hittable, so the next card is critical in protecting Commander Slade from the Magic Attacks.
When People play this strategy they always play Jicarilla the Rime in the second position, because this monster is the second most critical card in the play. The base specs of Jicarilla the Rime are nothing special: Two magic damage, one shield, nine health points and one speed for seven mana points.
The most important thing about playing this card is her set of abilities: Cleanse Rearguard, Tank Heal which is important to restore Commander Slade health from an occasional hit, Phase Ward this is the most important ability as it provides Phase ability to Commander Slade so that he can avoid magic attack just as successfully as he avoids melee and ranged attack. And finally Echo which makes repair and all healing and cleansing abilities fire twice per round.
In the next three positions I usually play a combination of three speed controlling monsters: Yaba's Pickle, Daarg Deadblast and Daigendark Surveyor.
In the third position I like to play Yaba's Pickle because not only he has shield, selfheal and slow abilities with decent base specs for the four mana, this promo card I was lucky enough to get in a Black Foil, so this card boosts my SPS and Glint Token winnings by a total of thirty percent: Twenty percent for being a black foil and ten percent for being a promo card.
Next I like to play an obligatory weapons training monster Daarg Deadblast, this is a great legendary card as it weapons trains the adjacent Yaba's Pickle and Daigendark Surveyor. He also speeds up the whole team and has triage ability that gets really handy at times.
The last card in this trio is Daigendark Surveyor which for only two mana has nine health, magic reflect, slow and stun abilities. That is a really nice set of abilities and specs for only two mana.
And finally the last card in this lineup is the main damage dealer Venka the Vile. This is a more controversial pick and I don't see it in the lineups very often. A more traditional pick is what my opponent chose to play.
Link to the battle featuring two variations of this strategy
As you can see this battle features two variations of pretty much the same speed strategy the only difference is that Arveno from The Guild of 
And his Surveyor and Pickle are reversed which I am not sure even matters.
After the first round despite a successful hit from Venka we look a bit behind, but no worries, the tables will turn soon enough...
As you can see at the start of the third round we are way ahead. This was due to the second successful hit from Venka which took out the Commander Slade. And this whole strategy revolves around Commander Slade resilience. So with his Commander Slade out of the picture it is pretty much a game over for Arveno.
And just like that at the end of round three its is all over without loosing a single card!
Over twenty eight SPS is our reward for winning this battle!
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