Artifact Sajj deck

[chrishaehnel]

You’re right on Stars, it’s honestly a great card to include right now. I would suggest running at least 2 Rasha’s. Aurora’s Tears isn’t really necessary I agree, but as for Mana Forger, it’s frankly a pretty bad card for this type of Sajj deck. If you don’t have many 4 or 2 drops then you’re probably leaning towards a more control midrange style, and at that point your mana forgers will be long dead before you can make use of them in the late game. Pax would probably serve you well as a replacement?

Like you’re only running 9 spells. If your deck ran more spells I could maybe understand that, but I doubt you’d get much out of mana forger tbh.

[phoinexflame]

Could you elaborate on what exactly make Rasha’s so good in Sajj? I just can’t find a reason to run it without dervish support, I don’t have problems dealing with most artifacts (Dawns eye would be hard for me to remove, but I haven’t seen anyone use it). I may replace Manaforger with Herald or Pax, but I want to test the current build a bit more before I make the switch. You are right that late game manaforger is useless, although so is Pax. Perhaps herald would be the best replacement since late game I could at least heal myself a bit?

[galaxydueler]

Rasha is important because it provides necessary range, which vet doesn’t really have

[phoinexflame]

Wouldn’t Blood of Air do that better? Most ranged threats have more than two health (Kelaino and others) and if it is only for heartseekers wouldn’t Boneswarm be a better choice?

[chrishaehnel]

Face a few Lyonar decks running arclyte and you’ll see instantly why it’s a must. Also it provides tons of ranged removal for a low cost. Blood of air is great, but it’s also 5 mana, which will more often then not eat up your whole turn. Rashas allows for removal while leaving at least 3-7 mana available to play threats depending on the turn.

[edward4244]

Rasha’s good against most of the ranged things, songhai are not in a good spot right now but take as example the 1/2 abyssian that gives +1/+1 to writhlings or kujata, or flashed makantor…
It’s a pretty good removal option with an anti-artifact effect added

BUT, it’s also true sajj can use wildfire ankh to deal with those threat,
and if artifact are not actually a problem, skip it may be a good idea.

It’s a tweak that will find it’s future in the incoming meta i guess

There aren’t a lot of good vet late game 2-drops btw.

[akurane]

How do you want your deck to perform? Do you want it to lean more towards a control, late game style or a more aggressive style? I only ask so that I can get a better sense of what could help your deck.

As others have stated, Rasha’s are really nice in a deck like this. However, I would prioritize Blood of Air first (if you don’t have Rasha’s, although I was still try to fit Blood of Air into your list), as the ability to destroy a minion without triggering death effects and dealing 2 damage to something else is really good in this meta.

Also, have you considered trying out Wind Striker? While it only has 1/4 stats, it can in some situations act as a Falcius, giving you an extra 2 damage with artifact synergy. Flying is helpful to deal with ranged threats and put minions in safer positions. You also run both 1st and 2nd wish, which can help resolve its weak attack.

[raviel1234]

ok, so i played 8 games with sajj today(that’s my daily norm).
it wasn’t too bad actually.
i tryed your deck but fast enough i realized that thunderclap is plain bad, i got a 6 mana 2/9 with provoke from it, the artefact gives no extra stats so i had to combo it to get the kill. the artefact got removed immidiately on the next turn, the opponent was fae, and the 2/9 turned into a fox and got killed. ether way i don’t believe in this artefact anymore i got a very good minion and still it didn’t help me at all. it might work against magmar but not going to work against vanar, how many strong minions do they even have? paying 4 for a 2/1 isn’t nearly worth it. then i went for bonecleaver instead, it is a win condition that theoretically with ankh could turn the spam against vanar player. i added some stalling options to balance it a bit, you are going to stall to wait for the tetems to get the kill.

the resulting deck was this:

this probably isn’t optimal but does did work reasonably enough. quite good against songhai, worked against magmar as well, vanar still seem to be hardest opponent, there just isn’t enough AoE removal.
i’m not sure about the manaforgers and autarth’s gift. those don’t seem to be relyable enough.

later on i wanted to develop more the concept of reducing cost of spells so this deck came to be:

this deck for sure is not viable, but quite fun, playing autarth’s gifts for 4 mana is quite nice, the problem is without dervish sinergy star’s fury isn’t really worth the ramping and 2 artefacts even if you get them for 4 mana aren’t good enough to justify the combo. might be that i’m just bad with it or too tired to play it properly. i guess i will give it some more time tomorrow. too bad ancient bonds didn’t add any arcanyst support for vetruvian, i could imagine arcanyst sajj being quite good.

if you have any ideas on how to improve the decks you are welcome. i’d like to make the second one work but it seems like it needs to be played in a OTK deck to be worth it, unfortunately i don’t have cards or spirit to craft those cards for a OTK deck, i might not be able to craft it anytime soon.

while the first deck should be enough to climb, if you don’t get matched against vanar all the day.
i would like to see if there is a way to counter spam as vetruvians.

[phoinexflame]

I’m still not sure on Rasha’s curse. I tried it before and it didn’t preform very well. I have fought a few Lyonars with regalia and it didn’t give me too much trouble. And furosa usually gets hit by Blast. I may try it again later however.

@akurane, This deck is more control oriented, although it is forced to play more aggressively against some opponents, most notably Faie and occasionally Reva. I haven’t tried windstriker yet as I find him a bit expensive at 4 mana (I know he would be broken at 3 mana but still), but I may consider him.

[phoinexflame]

Thank you for your feedback! I Think the addition of spinecleaver would give me a better wincon than I currently have. I agree that manaforger+gifts isn’t that reliable.

I used to have a fun deck Pre-expansion that resembled your second deck, and I agree with all of your points on it. It is a fun deck for sure, but it isn’t good enough for climbing.

[akurane]

In that case, I would suggest either teching in either lightbender or EMP as well to deal with Arcanyst decks. Control decks should always have at least one form of dispel; lightbender is a safer dispel option and gives you another 4 drop while EMP gives you a late game option to deal with artifacts, all units being dispelled (really useful against Arcanyst Faie and Vaath imo), and strong stats.

[phoinexflame]

I’ll try lightbender for now. If Lightbender won’t be good enough, i’ll try EMP, although I don’t like the fact that it removes my artifacts.

[raviel1234]

don’t think that EMP is a good idea when playing artefact sajj with bonecleaver, if you are using it, it would likely hurt you more than the opponent.

if you are going for a 7 mana dispell might want to try just play circle of dessication. it KILLs all minions aside structures, blood totems just happen to be structures , and you will have your artefacts living.
i’ve been considering it for some time, as star’s fury seems heavily underwhelming without dervish sinergy(~6 damage burst when opponent has 6 minions on the field and can’t even clean nothing, it’s just sad and costs you almost the whole turn to play it).
however 8 mana is not easy to live to when you are against a vanar spammer need some earlier answers i guess i will need to add zephir as well.

[phoinexflame]

I have no desire to use EMP with Spinecleaver, the Anti-synergy is obvious. I was thinking on trying him without Spinecleaver, but since I have to choose one or the other I will probably pick Spinecleaver.
Unsupported stars fury is bad I agree, I myself rarely use it, but I need some form of AOE other than Zephyr.
I have no advice against Vanar, It’s literarly almost an impossible matchup. If you do happen to find a deck that counters them, I would be interested in it.

[raviel1234]

i will try somethings out, that sajj deck feels nostalgic, i will try to balance it a little more.

so far i’ve only been able to shut down vanar with magmar and even that wasn’t relyable, they could still sneak a win sometimes.
so i’m not too optimistic on that matter, i’m doing it for fun at this point.
if i wanted to tryhard i would probably play vanar, might have gotten to top 20 with the win rates i got playing them. (i got to top 100 playing sajj yesterday, the first deck was sutrprisingly good, didn’t expect to actually climb with it)

[raviel1234]

update:

after another day worth of games played as vet, i tryed to balance the midrange deck to be more viable, the line of thought was something like this:

• manaforger seemed quite weak and inconsistent for the ramp, so i tryed celebrant instead, he seemed to be quite awkward to play, his tempo value isn’t great and being matched against lyonar i ended up losing alot in tempo and it costed me a few games, i ended up switching to pax for the immidiate tempo value that could help me get a good start and not let opponent to snowball early lead.
• star’s fury seemed very underwhelming in sajj so it was replaced with circle of desiccation, considering the high cost of the later i added zephirs and a lightbender to help with the early - mid game. it seems that zephir has quite good synergy with spinecleaver and allows to mitigate some damage by attacking the minion with least attack of the bunch. it seems quite good so far.
• autarch’s gift seemed quite random and without ramp the beuty of using it, gone. i felt that the deck was slightly lacking on draw, i like to have atleast 4-5 cards in hand near 7+ mana turns to have more options for potential plays to consider. so i ended up adding 2 wind shrike, other option was artiifact hunter but i figured since it doesn’t equip the card and only draws it and has 3/3 body for 4 mana i might as well get a 4/3 flying that draws on death wish instead. this once could be used for extra draw, removal with range or atleast bait opponent’s removal / dispell which is already not bad.

the new list looks like this:

surprisingly enough it seems to be quite competitive, i even managed to beat a vanar player with it first time since yesterday when i started trying the sajj deck. it appears that circle of desiccation removes embla clearly and this is considered core on vanar netdecks, for some reason.

overal the deck feels more competitive than the previous version, with carefull replacing you should have tools to deal with most treats. however vanars don’t play just 2 embla and the spinecleaver seems quite hard to get at times, so i would probably try to add 1 more spinecleaver and 1 more circle of desiccation. however i’m out of spirit for now and can’t afford to craft those so i guess i will leave the deck as is for now.

[phoinexflame]

Interesting, I tried your first deck and liked it, but this one looks better. CoD seems like an upgrade to Stars fury and they both use your whole turn anyway. I found two lightbenders to be too little, so the third copy seems quite welcome. My lack of Blood of air prevents me from testing the full potential of this deck, once I get it I will definitely try this.

Is Sunset Paragon really that good? Perhaps I am not used to using him but I couldn’t find a time he would be particularly useful.

[raviel1234]

Is Sunset Paragon really that good? Perhaps I am not used to using him but I couldn’t find a time he would be particularly useful.

Lets conpare paragon to entropic decay:
Advantage:

• AoE - can deal with spam especially if opponent doesn’t position well against it
• Leaves a body: 3/2 is not muv but beter than nothing
• Can be put near a friendly minion, it might die but you don’t need to go into attack range of a buffed vaath to activate it.

Disadvantage:

• Costs 1 more mana
• Can’t kill minions that have hight health but low attack
• Can kill your own minions if positioned near them

Overall paragon is just a way to clear things like meltdown or EMP that have huge equal stats. And to deal with spamm. It is similar to makantor as it can be used to punish bad positioning and costs 1 less mana.
You don’t always need it, against minions with lower attack than health it doesn’t work, that’s why circle of desiccation is there and 3 blood of air. It’s just an other aoe alternative that you can use.
if you feel like you won’t be needing it in that matchup you can just replace it, that’s why i have 2 of those and not 3.
Vanar those days often play 3 embla and 2 meltdowns so just using blood of air won’t be enough to clear all of them, you simply don’t have enough copies of it. That is the other reason i use it. To save stronger removal for when it is really needed.

[phoinexflame]

Thanks for the explanation, I recently had a game where it helped deal with EMP which otherwise I wouldn’t be able to deal with, so I came to the conclusion that I was wrong about it.