Deception is not a popular god but it is fun to play copying your opponent's cards, randomly generating cards, and outvaluing your opponent. The deck is inexpensive since most of the cards are from Divine Order. It is flexible to build since there are a lot of different cards to choose from, and what strategy you want to focus on. You can get value through order cards or rush your opponent down with hidden creatures.

Strategy

God Power

Always choose Orfeo's Distraction. It is the most versatile god power, you can finish off an opponent's creatures, hide their frontline to attack face, or hide your own creatures. Keep in mind you can't target an opponent's creature after you GP them so think about sequencing first.

Flip and Thievery are too slow to be used in this deck. You don't have the time to dig for cards with Flip or get random cards with Thievery.

Mulligan

Going first you want sticky creatures like Skeleton Heavy or Armor Lurker to establish board control and gain tempo.

Going second look for reactive cards so you can deal with enemy creatures. Hidden creatures are good too since your opponent can't value trade into them.

Playstyle

The deck adapts well to what you're facing. Against aggro decks, you can grind them out of cards and win through value or against control decks, use your hidden creatures to rush them down.

Early game you can generate value then transition to closing out the game with hidden creatures.

Generally, you want to use your mana to play cards and get ahead on board instead of taking the slow route and using the god power a lot early.

Keep in mind what kind of AOE your opponent can have to kill your hidden creatures.

Decklists

There's a wide range of cards to choose from for building deception as shown in the various decks. You can check out what choices people make and see what is common between all of them and what is different.

There are 3 main strategies for Order/Hidden Deception: getting value through order cards like Shackled Acolyte and Lantern-Bound Fae, rushing opponents down with Shadow of Lethenon and Shade Walker, or buffing your creatures with Atlanteans.

Order Value

My Weekend Ranked Deck

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I opted to cut Dark Knives since I found them dead early on and not needing them often to close out games. Counterfeit rarely comes up useful and ended up being cycled most of the time. Shade Walker is a little strange without more hidden rush but it's good to close out the game after you exhausted your opponent out of cards. Netherborne Binder and Skeleton Heavy help get board control early since I find falling behind and relying on Rapture Dance to be bad. Rapture Dance is a card I'm mixed about, sometimes your opponent goes wide and you can punish them but most of the time it's not that useful.

[TOXIC] TBH

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[tst] professerf

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jrok96

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kawaii maul

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Minimalswag talks about this deck in his video, Deception Deck That Actually Wins Weekend Ranked.

[sparta] jeeyk

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The most interesting list here. Heavy on the value with Vault Vagabond and Shady Merchant. Reflection Elementalist is a spicy inclusion, letting you turn one of your creatures into a 3/4 with ward.

Hidden Rush

[8m] fakemews

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You can read about fakemews' card inclusions and mulligan tier in his hive post here. Note that this more recent list cuts 2x Assassin Aim for 1x Umber Arrow and 1x Rapture Dance from the list in his hive post.

Atlanteans

[tst] cautionfun

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[tst] professerf

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[tst] mudman

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[8m] Sambam

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jrok96

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General Analysis

The decks share these 16 cards: Makeshift Shiv, Orfeo, Patient Pickpocket, Stoneskin Poison, Switch Duelist, Armor Lurker, Hunting Trap, The Hollow, Lady Marcella, and Ludia's Dedicant. All these cards are good value cards or trade well letting you gain card advantage and overwhelm your opponent.

The rest of the deck slots in whatever you feel like; beefy creatures like Skeleton Heavy, Pyramid Warden, or Guild Enforcer; Hidden rush like Shadow of Lethenon and Shade Walker; Order value cards like Shackled Acolyte and Lantern-Bound Fae; more removal in Piercing Bolt, Ransom, or Rapture Dance.

The mana curves are similar with half the cards being 1 or 2 mana cost and a couple of cards in 3, 4, 5, and 6 to fill out the deck.

Main Card Choices

Let's discuss why every deck runs these cards.

• Makeshift Shiv: Flexible value card. Can deal upto 5 damage to face over time or help control the board and can gain upto 15 favor. Don't run 2 since you don't want to draw both and have one stuck in hand.
• Orfeo, Champion of Deception: Comes down for free after you play a card. 1/1 Hidden for 1 turn, backline, and deadly means that it usually acts as free removal. Good for getting tempo, removing any threat they play.
• Patient Pickpocket: The best 1 drop for deception. After losing order, you get a random card from your opponent's hand, so you get a good card and info about what is in your opponent's hand. Most early removal spells are 2 mana so your opponent won't usually want to waste their spell on it. The flank can be handy if you buff it.
• Stoneskin Poison: Flexible early removal that goes through ward. Order also lets you bypass frontline for two turns.
• Switch Duelist: Hidden 3/1 that switches stats at the end of each turn, so on your opponent's turn, it's a 1/3 and can't get pinged off by their god power. Good for trading up or going face.
• Armor Lurker: One of deception's best 2 drops. 3/1 with 2 armor is effectively a 3/3. You can keep it hidden until you need to attack. It loses the armor after the attack so you can attack into a 2 attack creature and not take damage letting you get 2 for 1. After losing hidden, it will still have 1 armor so it won't get pinged off.
• Hunting Trap: Great removal, most creatures have strength equal to greater than health so you usually have good targets, especially in the against nature. Can be dead sometimes against protected and ward when you have to ping it off with your GP then wait until the next turn to use Hunting Trap.
• The Hollow: Amazing value generator. Backline and ward make it hard to kill. It gives order to your creatures to let you reuse order effects and gives you a random Guild creature when a friendly creature loses order. Being an order enabler and payoff in one card is great.
• Lady Marcella: Lot of stats. The deadly skulkers are great for trading up. The 1/1s can get picked off easily by GP in some matchups but setting them back 2 mana to kill a 1/1 is good for tempo. The afterlife isn't much of an issue since you can deal with them well using GP, shiv, or armor. Combos well with Umber Arrow stealing their Skulker to trade.
• Ludia's Dedicant: Blessed is good. You want to play this later when you can so you can GP the turn you play it and guarantee a card from Dedicant. The random card is from your opponent's deck so it is better than what you would get from randomly generated cards.

Flex Choices

Outside of the main 16 cards, there are a lot of cards to choose from.

Creatures

There are a lot of good creatures to fill out the deck.

• Lightfoot Informant: Hidden 1/2 that gives you a copy of a spell in your opponent's deck. Good early value creature for late-game-oriented decks.
• Satyr Hypnotist: 2/2 that sleeps one of your opponent's creatures every turn. Great tempo card to nullify one of their creatures but 2 health dies to a lot of reactive cards.
• Jinxblade Duelist: Strong early threat that your opponent will want to take out before it snowballs. Gains health at the end of turn if your opponent has a creature. It nets health if you hide it every turn since it gains 1 at the end of your turn and another 1 at the end of your opponent's turn.
• Shady Merchant: 3 mana 1/3 hidden that at the start of your turn adds an enchanted weapon to your hand. I don't know if the weak body is worth the relics. It has seen play before in a Weekend Ranked topping deck.
• Vault Vagabond: Copies the top card of your opponent's deck, good for card advantage and knowing what your opponent is going to draw.
• Uncanny Rogue: 4/3 body is weak but giving deadly lets you turn your creature into removal. Really bad if you have no board.
• Hierophant Silenus: A favorite of fakemews. Gives your creatures a buff to copy cards from your opponent's deck when they damage your opponent. Generates lots of value if you have a board otherwise it's a dead card. Combos well with Shadow of Lethenon.
• Wild Hog: Good stats for early board control.
• Netherborne Binder: Wild Hog without confused. The life gain for your opponent doesn't matter if you're going for the long game.
• Vanguard Axewoman: Good early removal. There aren't that many creatures with 2hp in the meta for Axewoman to trade with so you often have to ping to finish them off. Great synergy with Uncanny Rogue giving deadly for Axewoman to trade into anything.
• Pyramid Warden: Big early stats. Really strong buff target because of its high health. Frontline also protects your smaller creatures. The afterlife doesn't hurt that much if you are going to end the game before the creature they get back matters a lot. Big liability late game if they have strong creatures in the void they can bring back.
• Munosian Infiltrator: Great for weakening early creatures like Skeleton Heavy and Pyramid Warden or killing 0 strength creatures.
• Skeleton Heavy: Good early stats for board control or getting buffed.
• Guild Enforcer: Big frontline body. Good for getting buffed or protecting your creatures.
• Reflection Elementalist: 5 mana 3/4 that transforms one of your other creatures into a copy of itself. Good for upgrading your weak or damaged creatures. 2 3/4s with ward is tough for control decks to handle. You can combo it with Umber Arrow, steal their creature and transform it so your opponent gets nothing back.

Removal

Deception has an abundance of removal options at multiple mana slots. A lot of deception's removal goes through ward by burning or bouncing. What removal to run depends on the meta since all of them have different strengths and weaknesses.

• Piercing Bolt: Removes armor then deals 2 damage. Great for dealing with armored creatures like Bronze Gate or Guild Enforcer or picking off any 2 health creature.
• Mugging: Summons 3 1/1 skulkers to attack an opponent's creature. Goes through ward and order. Good for taking off protected too. Gives your opponent's a lot of favor. The skulkers do dilute your void for opposing Pyramid Wardens.
• Sleep Dart: Sleep and burn through ward. Kills most early creatures. Can stall larger creatures.
• Trapdoor: Bounces your opponent's creature and goes through ward. Can be good if played on a high-cost creature to set your opponent back or get rid of a frontline.
• Umber Arrow: Can act as 2 for 1 removal, or steal a creature for lethal. Great when you can steal a creature with afterlife and proc it for yourself. Can be dead in some matchups where they don't have a lot of 2 strength creatures.
• Ransom: Bounces like trapdoor but increases that creature's mana cost by 2. Ransom is better played on high-cost creatures since it will take longer to get to higher mana.
• Rapture Dance: The card is too situational for my liking. Your opponent has to go wide for it to be useful. They can trade their creatures into yours to play around it. It doesn't get that much value or is dead in several matches where they have protected, ward, or don't go commit to the board like Control War, Tempo Magic, and Board Wipe Death. It's better to fight for board early than hope you live to play Rapture on 6.
• Counterfeit: Amazing relic removal destroying their relic and getting a copy. That said, if they don't have a relic it's a 3 mana cycle that's dead more often than not.
• Cutthroat Insight: A devastating card against control being able to steal their biggest threat in hand and use it for yourself. It is often dead against aggro where you don't have the time to use it.

Order

Most of the order cards don't see play because they're too slow and aren't worth the payoff. The cards that do see play are self-sufficient and have strong effects that are worth the wait. The order effects happen at the end of the next turn you play them so they are vulnerable to your opponent's removal. The order enablers like Prisoner Exchange are either dead or only okay without having order creatures on board. Dedicated order decks are too slow for the meta either getting run over by aggro decks or not being fast enough to close out the game against control decks before the late game threats come out.

• Demolitions Expert: The order effect to destroy an opponent's creature with frontline is too situational and slow. Your opponent has to run frontlines and draw them, then either you play it after you they play a frontline and not attack into it for 2 turns while you wait for your expert to go off, or play it before to hope you stopped your opponent from playing a frontline.
• Gorgon Gargoyle: The sleep effect isn't bad. The effect is too slow for most decks aside from dedicated order decks.
• Shackled Acolyte: The 2nd best order creature that sees play aside from Patient Pickpocket. The order effect to gain +2/+2 is always good. Mostly sees play as a decent order creature for synergy with The Hollow and Lantern-Bound Fae.
• Prison Escapee: Can get a lot of value but 2 health dies too easily and sets you back a lot at 3 mana.
• Inconspicuous Bush: A random card from your opponent's domain is a bad card most of the time and is not worth the order.
• Scylla, Carnival Ringleader: Transform into a 5/5 with backline and flank and gives +5 burn to all other creatures when order procs. The order effect goes after burn happens so your creatures don't die from burn when Scylla goes off. It is strong but really slow, your opponent's creatures don't die from burn until the end of their turn so they can still trade in.
• Lantern-Bound Fae: Rune of Fire on legs, controls board or burst damage. Good value card but 5 mana is slow and you rarely get it to return often. A flexible Ogre Archer that usually trades for removal is decent.
• Changing Locks: The effect to remove order from 1 creature isn't worth a card. Can give +3 order to an opponent's creature to go around frontline or stop it from attacking.
• Prisoner Exchange: Procs all your order creatures then gives them order at the start of your opponent's turn. Too situational to see play needing order creatures on board and not worth filling your deck with mediocre order creatures.
• Ring of the Siren: 4 mana that does nothing the turn you play it. Needs order creatures to be useful. Can give +1 order to your opponent's frontline to go around them.

Hidden Rush

Kill your opponent quickly with hidden creatures. The deck has a strong matchup against most of the meta since it is hard for most decks to deal with hidden creatures if they don't have AOE or random targeting spells. This strategy has a big weakness against nature, your hidden creature can get killed easily by nature's random removal and Selena's Mark gives them healing. Keep in mind what AOE your opponent has.

• Shadow of Lethenon: One of the most unfun, uninteractive, and frustrating cards in the game. 1/1 that pings your opponent's face and gains hidden at the end of your turn so your opponent can never target it, making them rely on AOE or random spells to kill it. Dark Knives on this ends games quickly.
• Shadow Matriarch: 3 mana 2/1 Hidden for 1 turn that spawns a Shadow of Lethenon at the start of your turn. Too understatted and dies too easily to see play, getting 1 Shadow most of the time is not worth 3 mana.
• Shade Walker: Typically your finisher, you want to play it later on so you have the mana to hide it from being targeted after attacking with it since it has low health. Shade Walker is strong enough to be run without the Atlantean buffers but the buffs do put it over the top.
• Avatar of Deception: Good stats and disrupts your opponent. Hidden 4/4 body is good enough stats to be a finisher. On roar confuses and sleeps a random enemy creature.
• The Mastermind: Adds a Mind Probe to your opponent's hand on Roar and when it damages your opponent. Mind Probe deals 1 damage to your god for every 2 cards in your hand at the end of your turn. It messes up your opponent's turn, they have to spend 2 mana to get rid of the probe or eat some damage. More of a tech card against control decks to get extra reach since the body is small.
• Handsome Devil: Having high strength creatures that are hidden is a surprisingly strong late game. Most decks aren't able to deal with hidden creatures well. Blessed is good for getting in sneaky lethal through blessed effects or the sanctum.
• Hooded Figure: Backline helps it from being traded if you can't hide it. Flank occasionally comes up to get pass frontline.
• Dark Knives: Big strength buff, great for burst damage and finishing off your opponent. Generally, you want to use it on a sticky creature to keep pushing face damage. In a pinch, you can use it to trade up. A neat trick is to hide your creature first then buff it to give it flank to get around frontline or backline.
• Assassin's Aim: Gives +3/-1 to your creature and gives them hidden at the end of turn. Similar to using Dark Knives and Orfeo's Distraction on your creature. Keep in mind you don't kill your own creature with its -1 health.
• Surprise Delivery: Gums up your opponent's board, can stop them from playing creatures if they went wide. Good damage to finish off your opponent too. Can combo with Rapture dance to kill bigger creatures. Makes your Pyramid Warden less of a liability late game since it can bring back barrels for your opponent.

Atlantean

A favorite tribe of teamstreamteam, Atlanteans is a package of a couple of creatures to include in hidden rush decks. They take advantage of two very strong creatures that buff Atlanteans, Boost Walker and Phase Touch Golem. The rest of the creatures are decent and just there to get buffed. This package is pricey with most of the Atlanteans being from Genesis and Boost Walker costing a pretty penny.

• Broken Harvester: 1/5 that attacks randomly. Does help control the board early somewhat, mostly there to get buffed by Boost Walker or Dark Knives. Twin strike from Boost Walker lets you choose your second attack.
• Rolling Watcher: Teamstreamteam's mascot Pebbles. 0/3 body that gains +1 strength at the end of every turn. The body is weak early but can get out of hand if left unchecked.
• Wind-up Roller: Draws 1 card for both players. Card draw is generally better for the player with fewer cards in hand and you'll usually play out your hand first being the aggro deck.
• Dwarf Atlant: 1/5 that pings. The attack is low but 5 health is good for getting buffed.
• Phase Touch Golem: The second biggest reason to run Atlanteans. 3/3 with ward that gives ward to all other friendly Atlanteans. Ward helps a lot keeping board against control decks and stopping your hidden Atlanteans from dying to AOE.
• Boost Walker: The biggest reason to run Atlanteans, gives +2/+2 and twin strike to another Atlantean. Huge buff that lets you board control and hit face.
• Crush Construct: 6 mana 8/8 is a ton of stats. The downside of losing life isn't relevant as an aggro deck.
• Spiral Golem: 8/10 that attacks random enemy creatures. Similar to Broken Harvester but this statline is so much beefier. It will run over almost any creature. Boost Walker lets this hit face for a huge 10 damage.