Advice or Thoughts on Lyonar Aggression Deck

[unreason]

Hello all. Like the title says, I’m hoping to get some advice about this list, see if there’s something better I can do with it.

The fullmetal alchemists are mainly there so I can immolate on five mana, and I’ve had fairly good success with the Arclyte sentinels (I honestly wrote them off as a bad card and ignored them without owning or using them until I found out that S-rank aggro Argeon ran two or three, then I reexamined them). Everything else here is pretty straightforward.

So. Any cards I should add or take out? Any numbers I should change? Are three trinity oaths and two spelljammers enough or should I get a third jammer in there? Or even take a jammer or the jammers out? How about sun bloom versus lightbenders?

Thoughts?

[rawwr]

I run 3 jammers and 3 sentinels instead of the sun bloom. Good old tempo ^^

[unreason]

Thanks for the response. Keep the lightbenders as they are? Any other changes?

[rawwr]

I run it like that for months now and it still works fine

[thematsjo]

Your deck looks pretty good overall but I agree with @rawwr on Sun Bloom. My variant is even more minion-based and aggressive, leaving out dispel entirely. I personally like L’Kian for her immediacy but Spelljammer is always good. I’m not sure about Tempest, I’d probably swap it out for another Sentinel and Alchemist for more tempo and flexibility.

[unreason]

Your lack of trinity oath is, of course, foul heresy. But never mind that. So potential swarm developments are handled through alchemists and sentinels and tigers, oh my? Plus immolation of course. I almost always run two board sweepers in every deck I make just in case, but if you’ve been doing well without them, I might try that out.

And now I’m actually thinking about swapping my spelljammers for sworn sisters for a while. 2/4’s aren’t as nice as 3/5’s, but two cards for me and none for them sounds good. The random faction cards could make for some interesting times too, though I feel like that comes out to more of a negative than positive.

I’ve definitely been having fun with lightbenders, but I’m thinking I could go back to the ol’ dancing blades instead.

When I have more free time I’ll compare your decklist to what I’ve been using and see what I can come up with.

Also, what do you think about the planar scout and its relationship with holy immolation?

[baharoth]

In a tempo oriented deck that aims to win within the first 5 turns Spelljammer is generally superior to L’kian because your opponent will be slower and won’t have the time to take advantage or the cards your giving him anyway. Lkian is only better in slow and grindy control decks where you don’t want to give your opponent extra ressources.

[thematsjo]

Trinity Oath is a great card but it doesn’t give you any tempo which is why I prefer Sojourner, L’Kian and/or Spelljammer in its slots! It’s a total Auto-Include everywhere else, agreed there. Dealing with swarm can be a pain but Immolation tends to get that job done and both Sentinel and Alchemist help with that function as well without damaging your own stuff while leaving a body to boot. It’s definitely a debatable point and Tempest is a great card but that’s my reasoning and I’ve been content up to now. There’s Blistering Skorn and Frostbone Naga of course if you really want some more crowd control, I don’t know how much we need in the upcoming meta.

The reason I somewhat disagree with @baharoth on L’Kian is that she gives you two cards right away whereas Spelljammer forces you to wait and get only one. Not only does Lyonar have pretty good odds of spawning useful cards but with L’Kian you can play them right away or replace into something more useful. The weaker stats are definitely significant and a good reason to go Spelljammer instead but I’m not convinced so far. You’re very likely to hit a very low hand size with this deck so getting an instant reload tends to be very valuable. I agree with baharoth that (imo) the issue of giving the opponent cards isn’t really a deal-breaker though.

Lightbender is a great pick and I can easily imagine you keeping it but I find it’s difficult to benefit from dispel when you’re trying to end matches quickly and Lyonar (w/ momentum) typically has a lot of ways to push through early enemy Provoke. I like Dancing Blades for the tempo and it is just powerful enough to push things over the edge a lot of the time. To be clear I think your list already looks great after the Sun Bloom swap, I’ve just been offering food for thought.

With regards to your thread: I really want to like Planar Scout and I don’t think it’s at all crazy to Airdrop Immolations into the enemy ranks in the way you describe. My concern is that I’m not sure if there are enough instances where that combo is actually more useful than the alternatives to make it worth the inclusion. As a tempo deck you should be up in your opponent’s face anyway which makes it very difficult for them to create a big enough distance between you and them to put you out of reach of a 5-mana Immolation, especially at that point in a match. You have Alchemist and Judgement and even Tiger to take out threats that are truly too far away and I’ve even daisy-chained Sentinels from Alchemists to reach farther than the opponent might hope. I’d love to be wrong on this though because I think Planar Scout is a cool card; maybe it can see play in a Zoo deck using Empyreal Congregation?

[unreason]

Concerning planar scouts, I had a little fun with them, got off an immolation that wouldn’t have worked with an alchemist, but it’s true that the times they’ll let you pull that sort of thing don’t compensate for their general lack of blood tearing.

Concerning draw cards, I thought about what was said about trinity oath, the debate between sworn sisters and spelljammers, and my personal feelings on sojourners (not bad, and good removal bait, but takes too long to draw and has no guarantee) and here’s what I came up with.

Why choose? If I like both better than sojourners, and trinity oath isn’t tempo enough, then let’s run sisters and jammers. At this point I’m running @thematsjo’s deck with spelljammers replacing the sojourners. We’ll see how it does.

For reference…

The version I’ve got posted in the opener is based heavily on the first of these decks from Bagoum, with card choice influenced a little by the second and my personal taste. They both favor spelljammers and trinity oath. But I guess I’ll see what happens. The sworn sisters may turn out to be interesting.

Oh yeah, and we’ll see how those dancing blades treat me too.

…Huh, weird. The preview for this post shows a gap between those second two decklists, but I can’t get it to actually show up in the post no matter how many lines I put between them. Oh well.