Light’s Verdict mini-set just dropped last week and boy was it exciting! So many cards to chase and for good reason. One of the legendaries in the set is called the Divine Coronet and is causing quite a stir, as it has the potential to pop out a 9-mana minion as early as turn 4 or 5! Not only that, but with the right deck, you can do this multiple times. Wild right?? Let’s go over my version of the deck and how it works.
Not a bad looking turn 5 board right?? Screenshot courtesy of [FF]Stack15
Link to Deck List. You might have noticed that the deck is full of 1-drops; the reason for this is simple. Lost In The Depths (LITD) is used to get rid of all of those cards in your deck therefore helping you draw your Coronet and combo pieces as quickly as possible.
To facilitate getting to that spell if you didn’t find it in your mulligan, most of the 1-mana cards are either Foresee or Draw. We actually use up all the 1-mana Foresee/Draw creatures and spells available to Magic, and there are slots that are filled with what I think are the best for the deck; you may switch them up if you want to, but I’ll go over why I think they are worth it.
Assistant Alchemist can help you reduce your LITD to 0 mana, allowing you to play both of them on turn one without using your mana pip. Even if you didn’t have LITD in your hand yet, you can use it to reduce one of your draw spells to 0. You can also use it to reduce your combo spells of Clone and Immaterialize in later turns as well. Vanguard Axewoman, one of the most solid neutral Welcome cards, provides you with some clearance against Aggro decks. Lastly, Backstreet Bouncer provides you with a Rune that is usually helpful. There are other options for these spots as well, such as Rampart, Broken Harvester, Scuttler Sentry, etc which all provide some kind of board presence/defense against Aggro and early damage (getting killed before being able to use your 9-drops effectively is your weakness) . Pick something you like!
The mulligan is pretty simple: your goal is to have LITD and a 1-mana creature in your hand, with the last card being ideally Clone, Warp Engineer, or Coronet. The last card doesn’t matter as much because if you have the first 2, you’ll be drawing them soon enough. When you are searching for LITD, prioritize your non-drawing, non-Foresee creatures first to throw away, but it’s always a good idea to keep 1 1-drop in your hand just in case you find LITD and need a target.
*results not guaranteed :P
When you don’t start with LITD in your opening hand, your goal is to find LITD as soon as possible. As stated earlier, use your plethora of card draw and Foresee (including your God Power) to achieve this. If somehow you don’t have a 1-mana creature of your own to target with LITD, remember that you can target your opponent’s 1-drops as well.
Once you’ve played LITD, your deck will be at most 7 cards. The sequence then goes like this: You use Warp Engineers to reduce the Coronet to 2 or 0, depending on how many you have in-hand, then you play the Coronet, it shuffles back into your deck (with the reduced mana cost), then you may Clone it when you draw it next (make sure to use a Warp Engineer on it first if you have it, or just make sure there’s no 1-drops so that Clone targets the Coronet) or play it, choose your 9-mana Fighter, then use Immaterialize on it to get another copy (with halved mana cost!) to your hand. The last card that you’ll find in your deck after LITD is Safeguard Incantation; this card serves a few purpose: it draws you after card which is good, but it also provides your God with Ward and Protected. These statuses are useful against face damage spells (or War’s Slayer God power), creatures, combo decks, and lastly Fatigue. Once you’ve played your combo, you won’t have any cards in your deck so Fatigue is something that can kill you over time. Make sure to use as much mana each turn after as possible to reduce the Fatigue damage, such as your God Power and Sanctum.
There are many great 9-drops that you can delve, but some are obviously better than others. It depends on the board and game state as well, but some notables are: Anagreos, the only choice that has Godblitz, Polyhymnia, the king of defense and most likely a guaranteed win against Nature, and Avatar of Magic, especially if you still have a spell in hand to use to trigger a Beam barrage.
One of the most common ways to lose when playing this deck is to die to an aggressive deck that can either bypass your 9-drops for lethal or rush you down when you have a bad draw and can’t find LITD quickly. There isn’t much you can do in these situations.
Another way is to die to Fatigue after you’ve use up all your cards. But you have played 3 9-drops! Well, sometimes you just got some bad choices like Raiding Kraken or Howling Berserker leaving you with only one good option, or your opponent has enough stall and removal to keep your big monsters at bay until you die of Fatigue or face damage. Some Gods with good removals and stall against this type of deck include Light (Order, Obliterate, etc.) and Deception (Order, Hunting Trap, Rapture Dance, Pull from Board).
Also, against Deception especially you want to play the Coronet before your opponent has 5 mana in case they Cutthroat Insight it from you, and to play Immaterialize the same turn as your drop it in case they Bound By Her Will your Coronet. This last part is important against all Gods, as they all have access to kill it through the neutral card Onyx Nightblade, although these aren’t commonly seen. Another thing Deception can do is to use Surprise Delivery to fill up your board so that you won’t have much room to play 1 or more Coronets; remember it’s a good thing to try to clear your own board when possible, running your Warp Engineers and 1-drops into your opponent’s creatures if there are any.
Light’s Verdict brought a set of very interesting cards to Gods Unchained, and here I showed you a fun and competitive deck with Divine Coronet. While LITD are the backbone of this deck, which costs ~$70 each, Clone itself is half of the deck’s cost at ~$150. You can play a cheaper version by removing Clone and replacing it with another 1-drop. This means you’ll only get to play the Coronet 3 times which can already be overkill haha. But if you really think you need a 4th Coronet and don’t want to invest in Clone? Well lucky for you, Light’s Verdict brought the Mage another card that you can use to accomplish this: Pyrrhic Knowledge! And the downside to the card is mitigated since you would be playing it with an empty deck anyways, to bring back Immaterialize for your Coronet. Best part is that it’s only ~$3 right now!
Well there you have it, I hope you enjoyed the read. Now go play some Coronets then sit back and drink some Coronas as your 9-cost creatures roll over your enemies!
