Last time I wrote about Amazon Nature with BotW cards which did pretty good, but now I move onto the two Gods that I don’t think got that strong of cards in this set.
The first one is War; all the cards War got is Olympian themed. With a little help from my team Play2Win (https://play2wingu.com/) (since I didn’t pull any Village Vendors for some reason) I was able to build an Aggro Olympian deck, although I wasn’t sure if I should have went more Midrange with it or not. War has some decent Midrange options in Olympians, and not that much good lower mana options. However, I decided that since I’m showing BoTW, I should showcase the new Ally mechanic, and with an Aggro deck there’s more opportunity to trigger Ally (due to more lower cost cards being played). Perhaps I would’ve gotten a better result with Midrange but oh well!
You’re definitely able to pump out some big boys with the new mechanic, as seen here. Holy Writ weaklings can't stand up to us. Even barrels can be big boys!
Deck Link here. While there are a lot of lower mana Olympians, not a lot of them are meta or good; I definitely went for a few questionable choices just to be able to fit some 1-2 mana creatures in here. Another thing that Olympians lacks in the early game are reactive options, and that’s why I added more Frontlines to be able to hold back some creatures while trying to buff my own. Since this is an Aggro deck, more draw is definitely needed and that’s why the Blades of Whiteplain are included as the only non-Olympian creatures. Hyrtacus was a questionable include as well since it’s more Midrange/Control, but since my team had one I just stuck it in here haha.
I played 38 matches with this deck, but unlike the others in the series I actually started in Ethereal Diamond since I didn’t have a good weekend ranked and dropped from Mythic. I was actually able to climb back to Mythic with this deck after going 6-2. I was pleasantly surprised but after I got to Mythic I was brought back down and the deck performed more as I expected. Overall I had a winrate of 47% with this deck. There are a few problems with it that prevented it from being better. As stated before, there aren’t that many good reactive/Blitz early on, especially compared to normal Aggro War which uses a lot of Vikings. Wolf-Cut Vanguard is amazing when Empowered so you want to wait until 4 mana most of the time. Therefore if you lose the board early you might not be able to catch up, even if you have buffed up creatures in your hand. Secondly, since the Ally effect of Village Vendor affects all Olympians in your hand, you want to have as many there as possible. But that means less board presence and especially with an Aggro deck, you want to play to the board as much as possible. This presents a conundrum and maybe why it might better to play Olympians as a Midrange deck instead; but again, that means less chances to trigger Ally.
This deck does have some nice plays to it though, like Village Vendor into Parthene Guardians for some nice buff to your hand. If you can survive the initial onslaught and if you have enough Olympians in your hand, this combo can win you the game with your big creatures waiting to pounce. Martyr of Whiteplain works well with your buffed creatures as they’ll return to your hand with their buff; even without buffs, Martyr into an Empowered Wolf-Cult Vanguard is nice because he retains his health buff and can gain more health next time with another Empower. Lastly, Empowered Lykaios Adherent with a Commander Pyros is nice to buff your creatures while dealing damage to your opponents’.
I don’t think there are any standout cards for War in BoTW. Pre-nerf Reios was nice, but now unless you’re playing a Olympian deck, I’d go with Orcish Elite instead (plus you can have two of them). Ashen Child is not bad, while Village Vendor is a bit too slow; plus they’d only really work if you went full Olympians. Wolf Recruits is slow as well with the same restriction. Retribution is interesting as you’re getting a lot of damage for 1 mana; I didn’t include it in my deck as I wanted more creatures to buff, but it might be nice in a Midrange deck.