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Kuzma's Mother, another way to play Kara [S Rank]

#1

Hello everyone! The New Shim’Zar expansion has brought a lot to many of the factions, and Vanar is no Exception. Vetruvian, in particular, can now run a bunch of class cards instead of neutral ones. So, I wondered, what if I give one Kara, one of the most neutral-reliant generals, a deck with mostly primarily Vanar minions?

The neutral, “Kara and a bunch of Neutrals” Vanar primarily relied on denying your opponent tempo with 2 drops with abilities and winning by out-tempoing in the midgame or Saberspine tigers. This deck, however, relies on Vespyr Synergy to close out games. Unlike the pathetically neutral Kara tiger decks, this deck has 7 neutrals total. You may notice that the tiger count of this deck is Zero.

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Game Plan
A lot of the power in this deck comes from Glacial Elemental and Voice of the Wind. Together, these two cards can devastate the opponent’s board even if you loose board control early on. Glacial elemental is quite hard to remove once it gets buffed and, if both of these cards are up, you pretty much deny any chance your opponent has of developing a board.

Other than that, your win condition is to play too many overstated minions for your opponent to handly, just like other Kara decks. Iceblade Dryad can serve as a finisher if it hits a big guy from Vespyric call or even a buffed Crystal Cloaker. Dryad is a card that few people play around. She can give incredible tempo in the earlygame if she lets you pick off a vulnerable minion and, in the lategame, can serve as a finisher.

Overall, your game plan is to get down Voice of the wind or, more importantly, Glacial elemental, and overwhelm the opponent with overstated minions and Vespyr synergy.

Odd choices

  • Glacial Elemental:

Contrary to what a certain beanie-wearing streamer might say, this card can really do a lot of work. With one boost from Kara’s BBS, this minion is durable enough to survive most cheap removal. Oftentimes, your opponent will be reluctant to waste removal on this unassuming 3 drop.

  • Voice of the Wind:

Kara likes to play a lot of stuff. This minion rewards you for playing a lot of stuff. This minion also gives Glacial Elemental pings on all minions and double pings on other Vespyrs. As with Glacial Elemental, opponents are reluctant to burn removal on a Voice of the Wind. If you buff it to 5/5, this minion suddenly becomes a lot more durable.

  • Sworn Sister L’Kian

She serves as Card draw if your Snowchasers are not enough. Besides that, the body is good with Kara’s BBS.

  • Vespyric Call

A very underappreciated Card released in Shimzar. I find Vespyric call to be quite good in Kara decks in Particular. Almost all outcomes of this card are good in some way. Besides that, sometimes, you just need a generic Vespyr for some synergies.

Scenario 1: You get a small minion. In the early game, if you get a 3 drop or lower from this, you could gain extraordinary tempo by getting +1/+1 for free on a body that is, at worst, a 3/2 snow chaser. All of the 3 or under Vespyr minions (Snowchaser, Borean Bear, Crystal Cloaker, Iceblade Dryad, Snowrippler, Glacial Elemental) are good enough when pulled from this card. Later on, all of the above can either be buffed to be threatening or have a relevant effect that makes them worthwhile. Even Snowchaser is not terrible since it can replace itself.

Scenario 2: You get a big minion. All of the big Vespyrs are at least Playable (Arctic Displacer, Draugar Lord, Ancient Grove) and if they are allowed to simmer in your hand, constantly gaining buffs on top of the buff and cost reduction from the spell itself, than these truly become lategame bombs.

  • Iceblade Dryad

In the earlygame, this can set up favourable trades and help hit inaccessible minions. In the lategame, this sets up for lethal with a plethora of Buffed Vespyrs or Vespyric called big guys. Bonus points for allowing Glacial Elemental to fly away from danger.

TLDR: Kara deck that uses Vespyrs.
Strategy: Just Jund 'em.

6 Likes
Duelyst Patch 1.74 – Duelyst
#2

kara without tigers? blasphemy!

on the other hand i think i lost to this deck.

1 Like
#3

Was thinking exactly the same thing :laughing:

Seriously though, why no tigers? Other than some hate for neutrals or tigers.

#4

Mostly because I hate Saberspine tigers :laughing:.

Honestly, I feel that Iceblade Dryad and Glacial Elemental can do most of the things tigers do in my deck.

1 Like
#5

I think Hearth Sister is an odd pick here. No real synergy with the deck. I plan on running this with Spelljammers and Tigers instead of Hearth Sisters and Kron.

2 Likes
#6

Interesting. This is very similar to Mogwai’s Vespyr Kara deck, he demo on YouTube about a week ago.

[Album] Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Great minds think alike?

#7

Do my eyes deceive me? Is Mogwai running glacial elemental? I thought he hated that card!

#8

Jund 'em out confirmed best strategy. But when the deck doesn’t win you can always just remember, “it not perfect system”

#9

I’ll give you a like just because I learned a new expression from this thread.

#10

Thanks for this, interesting build. I’ve been tinkering with a vespyr/buff deck but this looks more solid, and despite a lot of card overlap, would play quite differently.

#11

No tiger = like
Because Kara don’t need no tigers!

Also cool deck, would you consider ancient grove cause grove + voice = good

#12

Grove is too slow tho, especially for vanar that has a lot of tempo cards. And more often than not grove is either a card you replace when you’re behind or a win-more card.

#13

It’s 10 different cards. That’s not what I call “very similar”.
The only similarity is that both are Vespyr Decks.

1 Like
#14

What was the point of this response other than attempting to prove me wrong on something that is a matter of opinion?

Honestly in a game that allows 3 ofs it is not hard to be 10 cards different from another on deck if you’re looking for consistency in your different choices. My comment was, thematically these two decks are similar in such that:

  1. They use Kara with Vespyr synergies, at a time when it wasn’t as common to see (which was true at that time).

  2. The main choices of attempting to snowball using voice of the wind and frostiva are there.

  3. They both want to use Iceblade Dryad as a alternate win condition.

Those are far more substantial similarities than nitpicking at stuff like “Mogwai has 3 tigers and 2 Glacial Elemental, whereas this deck has 3 Glacial Elemental and 2 Hearthsisters”.

#15

No - it was not. You’re comment basically was just: “Your deck is similar to Mogwai’s deck.” Which implies @excogitator had no idea of his own. The things you wrote in your second post are all missing in your first.
So to ask in return: What was the intend of your first post?

#16

Fair enough. I can see how you could interpret my original post that like that (you know internet comments tending to be read negatively and all that). Anyway the intent of my original post was to say something like:

“Oh look. You had an idea for a deck that is similar to a deck Mogwai had presented. I find it interesting that you both came up with a similar idea that seems to be working.”

Which was meant to be more of a compliment because Mogwai is a pretty well respected player. After that I was just showing the deck so he could see what I was talking about. The intention wasn’t to imply something like “You’re just rehashing an idea you saw somewhere.” Honestly, I gave @excogitator the benefit of the doubt and just figured he had independently come up with the idea, which happens all the time (and I don’t mean this in a snarky way. I mean it does happen all the time with stuff, like inventions, scientific theory, etc…).

If I had thought he was just attempting to rehash or steal the idea I would just say it and not try to be passive-aggressive about it.

Anyways, to @excogitator, I do apologize if my first post came across as suggesting this deck was not original. That was not my intention.

2 Likes
#17

I feel like this deck suffers without the third copy of Dryad. It’s probably the strongest card in the list, and one of the top 5 things to do in Vanar! :smiley: Love the list Excog, solid work.

#18

Fun too play, very solid. I used to go vespyr with feie, this is even better.

#19

No worries, Hanlon’s Razor. I’m sure you didn’t imply anything negative and was merely making an observation.

With the changes the Kara, this deck has grown even stronger! I plan to revisit it and add a few Bone Chill Barriers while I’m there.

#20