The Meta According to Discord: Week of 6 March 2023

Introduction

As the inaugural “Meta According to Discord” post, I’ve tried to represent every significant archetype of every faction in this list. Future posts may have fewer entries if the decks haven’t changed, and just link back to older posts – I’m not quite sure. The whole project is a complete work in progress, since I started it practically on a whim.

I am by no means an authority on the game, which is why I’ve tried as far as possible to get input from top players on the decks, and none of these decks are my own! Many thanks to the people who have contributed: Jay, crankypanda, ImprobableBlob, DJFlaisch, EurasianJay, Pixizz, ZyX, Blatm, Smarty, Navy Seagull and all the others who built the decks in the first place even if I didn’t get a comment from them directly for this post!

If you have any disagreements with this list, think a deck/archetype is missing, or otherwise have any comments, I suggest pinging me (Arx#2415) on the official Duelyst 2 Discord, or sending me a direct message. I’ll take any feedback, although for obvious reasons before acting on it I’ll try to reach some kind of consensus or at least have it affirmed by one of my arbitrarily-chosen top players.

Deck images are from, and link to lists on, the excellent site Decklyst.

Update 12-03-23:

Thanks to Blatm for confirming Solafid’s Fatigue list, correcting a misconception I had in its playstyle, and informing me that the Minionhai decklist is no longer very good! Thanks to Smarty for providing me with a Blatmhai list and a blurb for it.

Abyssian

Abyssian is broadly considered the 5th most powerful faction in the current meta. That doesn’t mean the faction is unplayable by any means, but its decks aren’t considered the most powerful in the game.

Honourable mentions not broken down here: Smash_the_Hamster’s Aggro Abyssian, Jay’s Midrange Abyssian.

Creep

Jay says: “Creep abyss is essentially a “control” deck that ends the game as fast as midrange decks rather than wanting to actually go super late. They use their strong early game removal/vast amount of heal to make it to 7 mana before slamming nova/revenant one after another to kill the opponent. Unlike a normal midrange deck, their gameplan is to go face with their midgame/late game rather than develop threats.”

Note that since most of the value of Shadow Creep is in Shadow Nova, practically any Abyssian deck can be a “Creep Deck” just by running Novas.

Jay’s Creep Abyss:

Fast Cass

MaSer’s Fast Cass is an aggressive Creep deck. The deck aims to use the incredible refueling ability of Rite of the Undervault to constantly develop many threats and consistently draw into Shadow Nova for the 7 mana turn and onwards.

MaSer’s Fast Cass, remixed by Jay:

Sarlac Swarm

Jay says: “Sarlac focuses on copying as many sarlacs as possible, using cards such as nether summoning, consuming rebirth, and sometimes keeper of the vale. Then killing you with Shadowdancer or just overwhelming with infinite value. Imo this deck should always run all 3-ofs because you NEED sarlac early to win, and that helps find it.”

Made most famous by Kieran, Sarlac Swarm Abyssian relies heavily on drawing Sarlac and abusing him to gain infinite value for sacrifice spells like Ritual Banishing and Darkfire Sacrifice, especially to ramp out Vorpal Reavers. Consuming Rebirth and Nether Summoning can both be used to multiply Sarlacs, generating a potentially substantial board that can’t be removed without dispel. Nether Summoning also has the potential for huge swing turns by allowing you to summon enemy minions you destroyed.

Kieran’s Sarlac Abyss:

Swarm Abyss

Pixizz says: “This one goes pretty all in on swarm and can only win with the synergy [Soul Grimoire/Deathfire Crescendo], it’s decently consistent but it can lose hard also quite often. Depending on the matchup you either win with a prophet [of the White Palm] or a [Soul] grimoire.”

Prophet of the White Palm’s Opening Gambit allows you to keep a swarm board alive through spell-based board clears like Tempest or Ghost Lightning. Spirit Harvester’s effect bypasses Prophet’s protection, but doesn’t ping Soul Grimoire’s durability, making Soul Grimoire the preferred win condition against Magmar. Note that unlike aggro decks that also summon many cheap minions, Swarm Abyss does not want to hit face unless there’s a Deathwatch payoff on board.

Pixizz’s Swarm Abyss:

Lyonar

Lyonar is generally accepted to be one of the top two factions in the current meta, jockeying for position with Vanar. As far as I can tell there’s no firm consensus on exact levels, but Lyonar is often considered the best.

Midrange Lyonar

Jay says: “Midrange lyonar can be built many ways, but the most important part is it tends to run all the strong staple cards every lyonar deck runs [Windblade Adept, Silverguard Knight, Tempest, Martyrdom, Holy Immolation, Arclyte Regalia], as well as a bit more late game than a traditional tempo lyonar*; such as 6-7 mana minions or more value. You can also run Divine Bond for when a big unit sticks to close games.”

(* tempo Lyonar: “more cards that either close the game or give you board control to close the game,” e.g. Arclyte Sentinel, Dancing Blades, extra early game minions.)

Jay’s Midrange Lyonar: (Note: Jay says he would cut Circle of Life if Spirit Harvester were nerfed.)

Heal Lyonar

Healyonar is a tempo deck hinging on Lyonar’s excellent healing cards and their synergies, particularly Sunriser. The usual suspects, Windblade Adept and Silverguard Knight, provide an excellent early game backbone, with Lightchaser offering a bulky body for a 2 drop with potential to scale out of control if not answered quickly. Sunriser gives even more crushing board control than Lyonar usually has, punishing your opponent for healing themselves as well as triggering off your own cards.

Meziljie’s Healyonar, remixed by CrankyPanda:

Fatigue Lyonar

Jay says: “Fatigue Lyonar is a deck focused on making it to super late game through removal recursion [copying spells] and healing. They often don’t even run some of the best/tempo heavy cards such as Silverguard Knight, instead running Alcuin [Loremaster] and Aerial Rift/Keeper of the Vale for more Martyrdom recursion/heal recursion.”

Fatigue usually lacks a specific win condition, instead relying on the opponent simply running out of threats before you run out of ways to remove them. As game length goes to infinity, Arclyte Regalia gains infinite value as your opponent becomes unable to remove it.

Fatigue list attributed to Solafid, but I’m not sure: (Update: It is Solafid’s, thanks Blatm!) (Note: Fatigue lists have a lot of flexibility outside of the core spell recursion elements, as they don’t rely on any specific other synergies.)

Magmar

Magmar has historically been considered the strongest faction, although by sequential small nerfs its overall power level has fallen enough that some people consider it only 4th best. On the other hand, Magmar decks tend to be overbearing and frequently unfun to play against.

Midrange Magmar

Midrange Magmar relies on Magmar’s suite of cards that very efficiently answer specific board states, like Spirit Harvester against wide boards or Natural Selection against single large threats. Flash Reincarnation smooths the curve and enables combos like Twin Fang - Flash - Elucidator for 15 damage out of hand.

Jay’s Midrange Magmar:

Twin Fang Combo Magmar

The Twin Fang combo is straightforward: You play Twin Fang, self-damage ramp cards, and in some lists, Artifact Hunter. As soon as your board or a Kujata survives, you can play Twin Fang to immediately trigger its effect multiple times and deal immense damage to face.

An alternate list that leans harder into the combo is included as well. Keeper of the Vale and Mogwai allow you to generate extra value from it, but make the deck substantially harder to pilot.

CrankyPanda’s Tempo Twin Fang:

(Alternative, less tempo list: Jay’s Keeper Twin Fang)

Control Magmar

Control Magmar wants to make use of Magmar’s excellent board control cards, like Spirit Harvester, Makantor Warbeast, and Metamorphosis, to stay far enough ahead for long enough to get a payoff from big drops like Silithar Elder.

Zezetel’s Control Magmar:

Songhai

Songhai has traditionally been considered the 4th best faction, but thanks to the nerfs to Magmar in the last patch and Songhai’s good matchup into Magmar in general some people now consider them slightly better than Magmar.

Spellhai

As the name suggests, Spellhai leans into playing a lot of spells with synergy cards. The complexity of the interactions between some of the cards and the board give the deck an extremely high skill ceiling, but the existence of extremely direct lines of play like Tusk Boar - Triple Saberspine Seal for 12 damage out of hand for 5 mana also gives them a low bar to entry. As a rule playing against Spellhai is more difficult to do effectively than playing as Spellhai, due to the amount of burn and number of board states you have to play around.

Jay’s Spellhai:

Arcanyst Spellhai

Including this as a subtype of Spellhai that runs Owlbeast Sage as well, offering a bit of board presence and an alternate highroll win condition.

EurasianJay’s Arcanyst Spellhai

Blatm Midrange

Blatm Midrange/Blatmhai/Blatm Midhai is a midrange Songhai list named for its creator, Blatm.

Smarty (nominated by Blatm as the best person to describe it) says: “Blatmhai uses Songhai’s tools to gain a lead in the early game with Tusk Boar and Heartseeker alongside a suite of strong neutrals to apply consistent pressure. Other Songhai decks can struggle in the late-game, but this deck can use Ancestral Divination to refill and has more healing options, while still able to produce the ridiculous burst turns that define the faction.”

Blatm’s Midhai:

Minionhai (Outdated)

UPDATE: Blatm and Smarty informed me that this list is outdated and if you want to play midrange/with minions, you should play Blatmhai instead. I’m leaving this here because it was there when I published the list and I don’t want to bamboozle people, but it is not recommended any more.

Named in contrast to Spellhai, Minionhai… plays minions that don’t just interact with spells. The iconic addition is Hamon Bladeseeker*, which with its phenomenal stats can win games by itself. Sword of Mechazor with Inner Focus is a mini-Makantor Warbeast, and with Killing Edge as well it’s a mega-Makantor.

* Smarty says “Hamon is less good against magmar now that letting them stick a board means you instantly lose, and that [Hamon] was one of the main selling points”

Smarty’s Minionhai:

Vanar

Vanar are a solid top 3 faction right now, although as usual opinion is divided on where exactly they stand. However, many Vanar decks are harder to pilot than their Lyonar or Magmar counterparts.

Wall Vanar

The name of the deck says a lot. Unfortunately I have never got to grips with how you really want to play Vanar decks and I didn’t get much of an explanation for these, I’m afraid. However, they get a lot of tempo out of using Glacial Elemental with Bonechill Barrier and infinite Snowchasers for board control. Cryogenesis provides board control and a tutor for Glacial Elementals and their activators, for more board control.

Blatm’s Wall Vanar:

Tree Vanar

“Tree” is Ancient Grove. The ability to create a large board creates powerful turns with Razorback, bogs your opponent down with 1/1 Treants after Grove comes down, and also offers strong Lady Locke turns. Prophet of the White Palm protects those boards from spell-based clears, particularly Lyonar’s Tempest and Holy Immolation.

CrankyPanda says about Tree Vanar and Deer Vanar (see next entry): “you can also go 3x Deer [Voice of the Wind] 3x Tree [Ancient Grove] 0x keeper [of the Vale] and maybe that’s better vs. Mag. Jax [Truesight] helps vs. vet, abyss matchups. I even like it vs. Lyo when ur playing with prophet [of the White Palm]. closes games faster but no glacial [Elemental] synergy.”

Jay’s Tree Vanar:

Deer Vanar

“Deer” is Voice of the Wind. Not unlike Tree Vanar, Deer Vanar also wants to get a board for the same payoffs, but using Crystal Wisp to ramp into the larger drops much faster. Voice of the Wind provides a consistent source of tokens, and Winter Maerids are Vespyrs, so they trigger Glacial Elemental as well.

Oli’s Deer Faie:

Vetruvian

Vetruvian is unanimously agreed to be the weakest faction right now, largely due to their lack of a coherent identity or specific win conditions. They are by no means unplayable, though!

Mech Vetruvian

Mech Vet is based on a fairly simple idea: use Manaforgers to rapidly cycle through your deck using Vetruvian’s many cheap spells with “Draw a card” riders; play the Mech minions you draw that way; on your 9 mana turn, play Mechaz0r!! and Time Maelstrom to immediately activate Mechaz0r!!. Ideally, you can also copy Mechaz0r!! once or twice with Mirage Masters, but you can also use the Mirage Masters before that to copy threats from your opponent. There are several variations on the deck possible, including running more Time Maelstroms for more Mechaz0r!! destruction, or running more copies of fewer cards to make replacing more consistent.

ImprobableBlob says: “it is mechs, uses manaforger nonsense and cheap mech units to win board and dig through the deck super fast, mech + mirage master/mealstrom is the win con. Not the most difficult deck to play, maybe a 4/10 in that regard. I think it is the best vet deck and can compete with basically everything.”

ImprobableBlob’s Mech Vet:

Obelysk Vetruvian

Obelysk Vet is something of an all-or-nothing deck. If you have a strong opening playing multiple Obelysks that your opponent fails to answer, you are very far ahead; but on the other hand if your opponent dispels your Obelysks they’re useless, and attack-based removal like Natural Selection and Nightsorrow Assassin are extremely effective against them. Portal Guardian benefits from Dervishes summoned by your Obelysks as well as from other minions you summon, and Mirage master allows you to copy your Starfire Scarabs, your Portal Guardians, or your opponent’s threats as needed.

Zohan’s Scarabs Obelysks:

Artifact Vetruvian

Artivet is on this list not so much because it’s good as because it’s popular. Your goal is to survive for long enough to play multiple copies of Aurora’s Tears and, ideally, one-shot the enemy general. Some lists run Time Maelstrom as an additional win condition.

Otto’s Artefact Vetruvian: