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 ’s video to learn about the new keywords Echo, Empower, and Tempt Fate.
Death
Death has one new main deck strategy from MJ, Heirloom/1 Mana Anubian. The rest of cards are an assortment of Atlanteans, Nethers, Anubians, and spells for aggro or control. Death is deep into the heirloom and 1 mana anubian strategy with over half of the new cards being related to it. The devs have mentioned wanting to push a new deck archetype for death and not wanting to make a lot of support for the infamous Board Wipe Death. Although the devs might have overshot the power level of Heirloom Death.
Heirloom/1 Mana Anubian Death
Heirloom Death is an aggressive deck that overwhelms the opponent with cheap Anubians. It uses face ping cards like Priestess of Takhat, Raving Necromancer, and Skull Scepter to wear the opponent down. You can fill your board up easily with 1 mana Anubians from Pharaoh's Heirloom, Reach into the Black, and Land of the Dead so you have lots of staying power on board. A lot of your cards have empower that add a Pharaoh's Heirloom, so you always gas in hand to play Anubians. It also has good removal in Curse of Greed and Dead King's Touch.
The deck is super strong. It has reach, recursion, and card generation. The 6 pingers in the deck give you a lot of face damage when your Anubians die and the creature pingers are 1 mana so you can bring them back easily with all of your revive cards. You also have good board presence since your summon from the void cards summon a lot of guys.
Pharaoh's Heirloom summons Wretched Vanguard and Vile Reaver which look weak by themselves but looks can be deceiving. Wretched Vanguard has mediocre stats and a minor afterlife but the frontline forces you opponent to kill it and you can summon it so many times the afterlife starts to rack up a lot especially with your other pingers. Vile Reaver is strictly worse than Vanguard Axewoman by itself but the Anubian tribe gives so you much synergy with the rest of the cards. You can drain your opponent for a lot by trading it in and getting it back again and again. These two guys make it hard for any opponent to make good trades since you can control the board well with frontline and blitz creatures that you can summon often.
The legendaries are nice to have but they're not mandatory. I'm not sure which ones would make the cut in an optimized list. Semut is strong being able to buff up your board of cheap Anubians and you can get more buffs when you recur him. Asenath is great if you can stick it and start recurring a Vile Reaver with deadly every turn but ability means it can't attack and you have to wait a turn so it is strong if you can get it going but it will depend on how fast the meta is. The Quorum of Pharaoh's Past gives you a machine gun to blast down you enemies but it depends on if the meta is slow enough where you can get a lot of Heirlooms out and play Quorum for big blasting.
Here's a sample decklist for Heirloom Death.
GU_1_1_BAuBAuGCbGCbCCcCCcCDvCDvKCUGAHGAHKCBKCBKCJKCJKCMKCMCFGCFGKCCKCCKCEKCEKCPKCPKCVIBRKCTKCTKCW
Other Cards
The rest of the death cards are underwhelming at best. The new atlanteans are bad. I don't know what they were made for.
- Beached Colossus has the oddest stats and card text. 8 mana and can't attack, why would I ever spend 8 mana on a creature I can't use. Deals 5 damage to each god, if I'm making it to 8 mana why would I want to damage myself, clearly you are a control deck if you're are getting to 8 mana then why hurt yourself after spending all the time to get there. 14/11 stats why do I need 14 strength when I can't even attack with it, 11hp is okay with frontline but your opponent doesn't need to kill it when the colossus will kill you for them. I am just astounded by how this card washed up into MJ.
- Salvaging Archive isn't much better, 6m for effectively a 7/4 sees no reason for play.
- Hemovore and Pact Fiend are junk, 1hp dies to everything.
- Lucky Devil is interesting, 5m 2/4 is terrible stats, the effect is decent but it isn't worth it. Does the effect only trigger if the attacking creature survived damage?
- Vengeful Surrepite is pretty good, 2m 3/2 is okay vanilla stats but the empower effect is a big swing early game being a body and removal in one card.
- Scorched Seeker is decent looking, stat mod is nice and tempt fate is a plus. I'm not wowed by it but it might see play as the 30th card in a deck.
- Bone Roller is on the weak side. None of the tempt fate effects are that useful to justify the stats. Giving ward to a wide board is the most you can expect.
- Bifurcating Curse is okay. It looks like an unreliable board wipe.
- Hope Lost is a neat card. Echo creatures give a 1/1 creature so Hope Lost can kill them in hand. It also kills Hippacria's Monster before it comes down and obliterates it.
- Over the Line is another 5 mana Death spell that acts as reach like Neferu's Will and Corpse Explosion. -1/-1 is a lot to give up for an extra attack on face so you should only play it for lethal since you'll be left with a weaken board. In comparison, Neferu's Will let's you turn small guys into one big guy that might be hard for for opponent to deal with.