[Gods Unchained] Slayer War - Face Demolition

War Wallpaper GU Slayer.png

Hey guys, today we'll be going to take a look at one of the most aggressive decks we have in Gods Unchained. The popularity of this deck comes from being able to win pretty fast and accrue a huge amount of wins in a short period of time. This is definitely something you would like if you are playing during weekend events where you can get better rewards the more wins you have. Aside from that, this decklist is consistent and powerful in the right meta environment and anyone that like to play aggro decks will find this one really enjoyable. Okay, let's take a look at the list:

Slayer War decklist.png

Core Cards:

Slayer War Core Cards.png

Sythes of the Harvest. As the name of the deck suggests, this deck is built around using the Slayer God Power and because of that, this is one of the most important cards on the list. It essentially makes your God Power deal 4 damage each turn for 3 mana, unless your opponent has a relic hate cards available or uses a lot of frontline creatures, it is only a matter of couple turns until it's over for them.

Whetstone goes well with our first core card and of course with our God Power. 1 mana for 4 damage is amazing, especially for the deck built around killing your opponent as fast as possible. Even though it can be useful to trade big creatures and create some tempo that way, the main purpose is just to close out games faster.

The same goes for Sharpen. A more flexible version of Whetstone that does 6 damage for 2 mana. This is also an absurd amount of damage for that cost and is mainly used to finish your opponent. Other than that, because the damage boost is split between a creature and a relic, there is a lot of potentials to use it as a tempo tool while also dealing additional damage to the opponent's face.

Out of Its Misery is a natural fit in a deck full of smaller creatures but because of some scenarios, this card can sometimes feel like cheating. The best example is drawing a 5/9 Pyramid Warden or 5/7 Skeleton Heavy on turn 2-3.

Tartessian Improviser is just amazing. It has a similar potential for cheating if you buff Pyramid Warden or Skeleton Heavy on turn 1. But even without that, it is a 2/1 and +2/+1 for only 1 mana. Mana efficiency here is off the charts and cannot be neglected. One of the best cards to start your game with.

Pyramid Warden is here for reasons mentioned above. If he gets an early buff, that can finish the game in just a couple of turns. Not only that but because of his downside being fairly low in the early game, this is perfect for a deck that wants to finish the game by the turns 5-7.

Face Melting Arsenal

We've seen quite a lot of different aggro decks in the past in God's Unchained but this one stands out for a couple of reasons. Because of the use of Slayer God Power, you are able to deal damage without requiring any cards in hand or on the board, technically you could do that with Soul Burn but that requires at least your opponent's creature so we won't count that. The other thing is the explosiveness it's capable of performing with as little as 5 mana. To give an example without any setup you can use your God Power and two Whetstones for 10 damage! Remember this is if we don't have anything in play from the turn before which won't be like that in most cases. If you have let's say a 2 attack creature and already equipped a relic with a God Power, for only 5 mana you could use two Sharpens and a Whetstone for a burst of 20 DAMAGE!

These examples are just to give you some perspective of the possible ways Slayer decks can end your games all of a sudden and because of this it can be tricky to defend against them even when you are really careful. Of course, you won't always have this combination of cards in your hand but there are more ways you can win the game. As we've seen from the Core Cards, there is a lot of tempo oriented cards, to give you a board control in the early turns which then translates into chip damage to face each turn so your burst range needed to win the game can become really low really fast.

Mulligan

The mulligan decision doesn't take into account versus what kind of deck or which god you are playing against into account so we will talk about generally the best cards or combos you should try to get in your starting hand. This doesn't change even if we start first or second.

In the first stage of the mulligan, the cards you would ideally like to see are Tartessian Improviser, Out of Its Misery and Deadly Arsenal (Best cards). If not, you should just swap out a card that doesn't too much in terms of your early game goals of taking the board control, those cards are Whetstone, Sharpen, Scythes, Reckoning. If you already hold all 1-cost creatures, swap one of them out to try and find one of "Best cards".

If your mulligan starts with Tartessian Improviser or Deadly Arsenal, you should try and search for Pyramid Warden, Skeleton Heavy and Master Tactician. In this case avoid keeping Bonded Warrior, Trojan Golem and Shieldbearer as those creatures aren't the best targets for the buff and are harder to play before the Tartessian to avoid them being buffed (this doesn't count for Deadly Arsenal). When you already have Tartessian and Pyramid/Skeleton, you can keep a spell or a relic as your third card to get better chances to buff your best target on turn 1 as any 1-drop can be played with a bag of tricks before the Tartessian.

If you start a mulligan with Out of Its Misery, you should try to find creatures with 1 health. The best target are Chicken, Tartessian, and Shieldbearer. Avoid keeping Pyramid/Skeleton to get a chance to pull them with a +3/+3 buff, ignore the last part if you already have a Tartessian in your hand.

TLDR; Pros and Cons

Pros

strong early game
huge burst potential
strong card synergy

Cons

weak against a lot of sustain
weak against a lot of frontlines
no late-game plan

Easier on the Budget

The list currently costs 0.228 ETH (around $63) which doesn't sound that low but if you replace one Chicken for a Card Shark, for example, you can shave off 0.05 ETH and if you replace both of them that's already half of the price for this list and it still remains competitively strong.

That's it for today guys. I hope the mulligan section wasn't confusing but if you have any questions leave that in the comments below. In this currently stale meta, while we all wait for a new expansion, decks like this will perform for longer than usual because we aren't getting any balance changes. There is also this value I talked about at the beginning of the post and that is getting incredibly fast wins on the weekend events.