Welcome back to another Adventure League deck profile, Mayors! In this series of articles, we take a look at the strategies of some of the Mayors who earned the maximum number of points in Adventure League Prologue: Goodbye, Namitori! This is our last article for the Goodbye, Namitori! series of deck profiles, where we'll get some insight into the play style of our winner, SirFranticLight!
First up, SirFranticLight explained that his Bella Blanc deck changed during the course of the league to react to certain matchups.
Below you'll find the way the deck started:
And next, you'll find how it looked at the end of the league:
Why did you pick this attribute?
SirFranticLight: I tried to build a control deck and quickly found out, that Authority has some great control tools to offer.
Tell us about your deck's strategy and key cards.
SirFranticLight: Legacy of a Hero made it quickly in my deck. I also thought Lightspeed Legalese would offer great control, but in the card pool right now there is not that much to counter (except for a Mysticism matchup maybe) and keeping 3 Sola on my turn to maybe use a counter is difficult, especially in close matches, where every Sola counts.
But even a control deck needs a way to gain renown and I decided to focus on my workers. Adventurer To-be and Loyal Litter are great first-turn cards and grant renown from the early game onwards. I combined this with cheap adventurers like Earth Channeler and Alms Alary to boost the Adventurer To-be and stack gain counters on my cards. Atrium of Rest supports this gameplan directly from the quest deck. These cards together with Detain are the key cards of the deck.
Talking about the quest deck: A friend, Carö, who was my opponent for many matches, also played Bella. But she did not play Retriever Knight at that point, so I tried to play a strength-based quest deck for the mirror match (Including The Clown and Anvil and Blader’s Gate). After a few games I realised, that it is still better to run Playing with Fire and Slip ‘n Slide and haven’t changed my quest deck since.
Also, the legendary of the deck, Twicetail, the People’s Hero, fits perfectly in that worker-based gameplan and comes with 4 strength, which, at first glance, lead me to a strength-based deck too.
A great finisher (beside winning with a quest of course) is Golden Tools. To be honest, when I first saw the card it read as an overpriced ‘put some Gain counters somewhere’ card. But Golden Tools often allowed me to earn 10 or more Renown at once. How you may ask, let me explain: I also added Starmote to the deck. Play it on turn 2, use its effect on turn 3. Alms Alary, Twicetail and Productivity Boost will help to increase their gain even more. White Collar Worker and Adventurer To-be are also great starters for this combo.
What are your deck's difficult match-ups? Are there any cards your deck has trouble dealing with?
SirFranticLight: Power can easily interrupt the gameplan. Rough Up is very strong against my deck, because it retires one of my best workers. Also, Explosive Flask can blow up Alms Alary. But luckily Earth Channeler, Amberspine and Retriever Knight are immune to the card. Mysticism made it even more difficult, because workers are frozen the whole game.
I only played once against a Subterfuge deck, so I can’t say much about that match-up.
Any other comments?
SirFranticLight: Another important combo works with Legacy of a Hero or Detain and Retriever Knight. When I am lucky enough to draw a Retriever Knight in the early game, I can bounce my stratagem several times and very often also draw it, when completing Atrium of Rest in the same turn that I played it. But learn from a mistake that I made sometimes: if the quest is not Atrium of Rest, play the Retriever Knight after the quest phase, or else the stratagem will be put under the deck with Bella's ability.
Thank you to SirFranticLight for the in-depth look into your league-winning strategy! We think it's a prime example of how workers and adventurers must work together -- even in a strategy focused on workers and Gain counters, adventurers play a pivotal supporting role!
We'd like to give another big thanks to all of our Adventure League's participating Mayors, and to you, the reader, for checking out these deck profiles! We're excited to return with more deck profiles in the future as we draw ever closer towards going to print! In the meantime, if you'd like to discuss the game or share your own deck ideas, come join us over on Discord!