Intro
With the new Gods Unchained expansion, Mortal Judgement, around the corner (it might be a very long 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 video to learn about the new keywords Echo, Empower, and Tempt Fate.
Deception
Deception has two main deck strategies from MJ. Weaken /Strength Deception (I wonder what the community is going to name the new decks), which is about weakening your opponent’s creatures, stealing strength, and getting payoffs for having the strongest creature. The other is Casino/Other Domain Deception, which is about summoning creatures from other domains and getting huge buffs.
Weaken/Strength Deception
Weaken Deception has a bunch of creatures with roar that weaken an enemy or steal their strength, so you can make your opponent’s creatures 0 attack and useless. Most early creatures have low attack, so giving -2 strength can effectively kill them. Turn 1 Marsh Walker no worry, steal its 1 strength and your opponent is left with a vegetable. If your opponent doesn’t have buff cards, they’ll have to kill off their 0 attacks creatures by running them into your creatures.
Shadowstep Backstabber, Blade Burrower, Beguiling Blade, and Alika Scarlet Thief are all echo creatures that steal or weaken strength so you have lots of staff debuffs from the first creature and the echo roar. All the creatures have low stats in exchange for their effects. Sneak a Peek is interesting, it lets you see the creatures in hand and give one -2 strength, so could preemptively deal with an early creature like Tavern Brawler.
Weaken Deception has a couple of payoffs. Shakedown draws 2 cards if you have the strongest creature. Heroic Brawler gives your weakest creature +1/+1 if Brawler is the strongest creature. Bound by Her Will lets you take a 1 strength creature.
Weaken is strong against aggro decks since they play a lot of cheap creatures that can get weakened easily. Your creatures can effectively kill their creature while developing your board at the same time. The deck is kind of useless against control since they only play a few creatures for utility or top-end, so your roars will be useless and you’re left with a bunch of understatted creatures.
Here’s a sample decklist for Weaken Deception.
GU_1_2_GAeKCXKCXKCaKCaKDPKDPBDtBDtIDBIDBKCZKCZKCdKCdKCiKCiCEACEAKCbKCbKCgKCgKCtKCnKCnKCoKCoKCsKCs
Domain/Casino/Wide Deception
Domain Deception is overpowered. All the of the summon another domain cards summon 1 mana creatures from another domain. The cards give tons of stats for their mana cost. There is a wide range of 1-drops it can summon from 0/1 Curious Wisp to 2/5 Veteran Hoplite. The most frequent 1-drop has 4 total stats. It can easily fill up the board on turn 2.
Aspect Juggler, Rollicking Lyricist, Corrupting Influence, and Appeal to Mercy puts tons of creatures on board. It has strong payoff cards too, with Twenty Sided Mace being a strong buff relic that sticks around, Lady of Whispers can get huge, and Galatea is a threat, buffer, and adds a card.
Corrupting Influence has an expected value of summoning 6.5 stats worth of creatures and gives them the tempt fate buff. This card puts so many stats on board for cheap. Most played 2-drops have 5 or 6 total stats for comparison, even Pyramid Warden tops out at 8 with a heavy downside in its afterlife. Corrupting Influence can high-roll or low-roll a lot.
While Appeal to Mercy is even better with an EV of 6.7 stats and you are guaranteed a +1str buff. It has a much low variance with creatures.
Aspect Juggler 70% chance to summon a creature with 3 stats or better, which is an improvement over the 1/1 that Cardshark summons although without frontline.
Domain Deception puts out so many stats so quickly it is hard for any deck to deal with it. Most AOE comes out at 4 or 5 mana which is too slow when Deception can fill the board on turn 2.
Here is the probability distribution on the total creature stats summoned from a single creature or two creatures from cards like Aspect Juggler or Corrupting Influence. You can see that the average creature stats summoned are above curve for the 1 and 2 mana summon cards.
Here’s a sample decklist for Domain Deception.
GU_1_2_GAeCDDCDDIAlIAlIAoIAoKCYKCYCEwCEwIClIClKCeKCeKChKChKCkKCkCEDCEDKCrKCrKCmKCmKCuKCoKCoKCvCAJ
Other Deception Cards
The remaining deception cards don’t fit in the two archetypes. They are mediocre pack filler for the most part. Team Up looks interesting twinstrike lets you trade and go face then hide your creatures to do it again next turn.