Witch of Thorns

Gamplay video/series for the deck https://youtu.be/E1tLIwHzT0g

Deck Pitch: We're building a spiky suit of armor around Magik and making the enemy regret hitting us.

This deck potentially has a lot of set up that it can want to do, but luckily you don't need it all to make this work. You can get away with only having a few pieces of set up and this still functioning. This is first and foremost a Change of Fortune style deck where much of our damage is hitting during the villain phase, but it does have a secondary focus as a partial Defend the Table deck. You won't be able to block all damage in a four player game, but you could do a pretty good job at two or three players. We'll break this one down by purpose since I think a game phase breakdown is less useful.

The cost curve on this deck is incredibly cheap so the set up you need to do is even easier to accomplish because of Magik’s cost reduction ability. It’s very possible to use it nearly every phase without wasting much.

Armor from Aether

You could easily get through a game only playing two of these in order to get your defense up to a reliable four, but every card you get down on the field is going to thin your deck out more and give you that much more room to avoid taking damage.

• Armored Vest and Defensive Conditioning both raise our defense so we are less likely to take any damage when attacked. Defensive Conditioning has the additional effect of helping us keep Dauntless active since it boosts our HP.
• Mystical Armor gives us Retaliate and will usually boost our defensive capabilities.
• Endurance gives us another HP buffer for keeping Dauntless active.
• "I Can Do This All Day" allows us to use our impressive Defense stat while either leaving us open for additional activations during the player phase or allows us to defend even while exhausted.

Bound in Briars

This next section is a helpful guide for anyone that struggles to keep their head wrapped around the order everything needs to go in to resolve all this damage (me, I'm talking about myself). During testing I would always forget something or get one trigger or response mixed up with another because I was rushing. So take a breath and take your time (I'm still talking to myself here). I think this is accurate based on my research, but if I'm still getting it wrong, please let me know in the comments so I can adjust it so I'm not misleading anyone with this.

(In order of resolution)

Before Boost Card is dealt
• Nova deals damage before the attack is made so he is very useful for prevent damage done by minions since he can defeat them before their swing. Very useful if you've done some set up to make sure they will be at two or less health when they activate.
• Magic Barrier resolves when the attack is initiated but before any other defense is made since it is an interrupt responding to the attack beginning. --> Flow Like Water triggers in response to playing a defense card

Boost Card is dealt but not revealed
• Riposte is played in this step, but not resolved until after damage is calculated. --> Flow Like Water triggers in response to playing a defense card
• "I Can Do This All Day" is played in this step. --> Flow Like Water triggers in response to playing a defense card

After Boost Card is revealed
• Preemptive Strike resolves during the attack after the boost card is revealed. --> Flow Like Water triggers in response to playing a defense card

After attack has resolved and damage is calculated
• Energy Barrier happens prior to the defense resolving, but only triggers if you took damage. It also triggers if no defense is made or if this is a one off source of damage not connected to an attack. Preventing damage with this and/or Magic Barrier can ensure your Riposte goes off later since the damage check on that happens after this.
• Retaliate from Mystical Armor and Dauntless deals its damage whether or not a defense was made or any damage was dealt. It always happens along side an attack resolving.

After defense has resolved
• Excelsior deals damage after you defend, so you can finish off a minion that survived their hit against you.
• Electrostatic Armor deals it's damage after your defense resolves, but requires no extra resources to function.
• Riposte requires you to have taken no damage from the attack in order to do damage. Flow Like Water has already dealt its damage in response to Riposte being played so it doesn't do damage at the end of the defense.

Power through Punishment

We have a few way to capitalize on getting attacked beyond just dealing damage back. Which one of these you prioritize depends on how you are choosing to play the game or if you need to fill any other roles within the game.

• Unflappable will almost always be useful on the field. Your defense is high enough to ensure you will rarely take damage from attacks and when you would you have other tools to prevent it.
• Hard to Ignore is good when you need a little extra threat management. Feel free to forgo these cards if you have a Justice player telling you not to worry about threat, but any threat reduction on the main is useful.
• Change of Fortune is almost always going to be good unless the scenario you're pitting this up against doesn't run very many minions.

Whims of the Weave

If you want to adjust some things in this deck, these are the ways that stand out to me.

If you're running a very minion heavy scenario and want to guarantee you get Change of Fortune out sooner replace a copy of Hard to Ignore with an additional copy of Change of Fortune. If the scenario you're playing has a very minimal amount of minions, swap Change of Fortune for another Unflappable so you can start drawing cards after defenses sooner.

If you want to lean a little more into a Defend the Table style deck, cut Dauntless, Endurance, and Change of Fortune for either three copies of Desperate Defense or Never Back Down depending on whether your fighting a Steady or Stalwart Villain or if you have a playstyle preference on those two. You'll still be dealing plenty of damage during the villain phase, but you'll be a little less focused on mopping up minions for card draw.

--- Munkey