I talked with Tenaka who is currently rank 1 with their Deception deck. To figure out how and why their deck works. At the time of this writing the deck is 73W-22L. He calls it Sleeping Nightmare.
About the deck
You can find the deck details and stats on Unchained Stats The deck is built around controlling the board until the opponent exhausts all their removals or the cards in their hand. Which ever happens first. It does this by stalling creatures by sleeping for as long possible and working your card advantage.
It also has a mid-range punch to prevent it from being knocked out of the match too early. Before it's engine can kick in and win. This deck's engine is our ability to sleep. We will use Exorcise, Demogorgon, Sleep Dart, Avatar of Deception, and our God Power.
With control I'm quite patient
And I try to apply a constant pressure
But without going for the kill
In order not to expose myself to nasty Mass removals
Or to waste my best removals on middle target
And then do not have them for their big gun
I want the opposite
- Tenaka
The Cards
| Mana | Name | # of cards |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Deuteria, Manashard Mage | 1 |
| 1 | Netherborne Binder | 1 |
| 1 | Switch Duelist | 2 |
| 2 | Hunting Trap | 1 |
| 2 | Lightfoot Informant | 2 |
| 2 | Mugging | 2 |
| 2 | Skeleton Heavy | 2 |
| 2 | Sleep Dart | 2 |
| 3 | Jason, Medea's Muse | 1 |
| 3 | Shady Merchant | 1 |
| 3 | Vault Vagabond | 2 |
| 4 | Avatar of Deception | 1 |
| 4 | Uncanny Rogue | 1 |
| 5 | Cutthroat Insight | 2 |
| 5 | Exorcise | 2 |
| 6 | Rapture Dance | 2 |
| 7 | Demogorgon | 2 |
| 7 | Double Dealer | 1 |
| 8 | Anti-Magic Expert | 1 |
| 8 | Charm | 1 |
God Power: Memory Charm
- For most of the game it is better to buff your creatures when you need to make a favorable trade.
- You should also use it to set up "traps" by encouraging your opponent to play more creatures for big board clears like Rapture Dance by making them unable to use the ones they have on the board.
- Lastly to keep highly dangerous creatures caged until you have something that can deal with them.
Early Game
During the early game you will be lightly sprinkling the board with creatures. With two purposes: to give the opponent targets they have to removed from the board using their removal cards like Canopy Barrage or Tracking Bolt and to be ready to remove their creature with yours. Here anytime they use a removal card you are getting ahead. To set up favorable trades you'll need to already have some creatures on the board since this deck does not have any blitz creatures in it.
Mid-game
If we haven't finished drawing all of our opponents removal cards now is the time to focus on drawing them out. You maybe getting into the shallow end of health at this point. Well now is a great time to play Demogorgon. Its leech ability will allow you to regain some of that lost health and destroy a few creatures as well.
Endgame
The board is clear or almost clear except for something very small creature. Now we play our Double Dealer to force our opponent to start top decking. If they already are top decking then don't waste the 7 mana and start laying out our game winners.
Against Aggro Decks
For fast decks Zoo or Death Burn what you are going to do is play your 1-3 drops matching them as much as possible. Sleeping as many opponents creatures as possible waiting for Rapture Dance or Demogorgon to clear the board. Then start rolling out your creatures.
You will be taking some damage during this time try not to worry too much about it until you need to, but just minimize it as much as possible. Demogorgon will help you heal up and last a little longer.
Against Control Decks
For controls deck like mage control and war control you will want to outdraw your opponent. That is simply drawing more card than they do. We will need to keep the board clear as much as possible but that par for the course since we are a control deck as well. We have several options when it comes to doing this. Our key cards are Cutthroat Insight, Double Dealer, Charm. We also have to be concerned with exhaustion for ourselves. So to combat that we have Deuteria, Manashard Mage and Jason, Medea's Muse which add cards to our deck.
And fatigue was a real issue
That the main reason for Jason and Deuteria
Ofc sometimes you get lucky and get great leggy
- Tenaka
Against Mid-range / Combo Decks
The key to defeating these decks is to prevent them from getting their combos. We will do this in multiple ways: picking off the pieces on the board and steal the others out of their hand with Cutthroat Insight. If they get too focused on getting that combo off and not countering your game. Drop some decent creature from your hand and roll through their health while keeping their creatures asleep.
Combos
Sleep Dart + our god power kills even the biggest creatures on the board. The +3 burn will make them nothing but ash as long as you keep them asleep.
Sleeping Dart can kill even the biggest Monster, Just keep It sleeping and let the burn 3 do the job
- Tenaka
Switch Duelist, Skeleton Heavy, and Avatar of Deception used in combination with our God Power can lead to some heavy damage fast in the early to mid-game.
Anti-Magic Expert use it to clear 2 of you opponents creatures by controlling one and attacking another one with them. That should kill both of them.
Cards to play around
Svart Basilisk recently has been updated ability to remove sleep from a single creature.
Last Call
This looks like it would be a fun deck to play with but that it would take a large degree of experience and expertise to play well. Hope you enjoy looking at one of the top decks with me. See you next time.