Now we move on to the two classes that can’t really make coherent Welcome and Core decks: Death and Deception. I decided to do Deception first as I believe their WelCore cards are better. A lot of people find playing against Deception quite annoying because they can keep their creatures hidden and steal/copy cards, but usually people starting the game don’t gravitate towards this God as much as others due to the “not as straightforward” playstyle.
Here are some strengths and weaknesses of the Deception God:
Strengths
-Hidden creatures with offensive buffs can kill your opponent while being untargetable
-Good stall/control/debuffing spells and Roars
-Can steal/copy your opponents cards; good card generation
-Burn/”mind control” spells and effects can destroy/take over creatures through Ward
-Gain insight on your opponent’s deck through the above and other hand-peeking cards
Weaknesses
-Creatures are usually under-stated and have no defensive traits like Ward or Protect
-Lack of reach without creatures
-Few sources of healing and frontline to protect your God
In terms of deck types, the most popular for Deception are Hidden Aggro or a Mid/Control deck, with both of them able to do decent in the highest ranks.
The most popular God Power for Magic is Orfeo’s Distraction, and it’s useful in all types of decks. In Hidden Aggro, it hides your threats or it can hide your opponent’s Frontline creatures so you can go face. In others you can do the same but also provides board control by dealing that 1 damage. Thievery is the second most popular and mainly used in Control decks to provide value; some of the 1 mana cards from other classes can be quite useful. Finally we have Flip, which can help smooth out your draws (and prevents you from ever taking fatigue damage) and again is usually played in Control.
As you finish the tutorial and level up, you’ll start collecting Core cards; Deception has some great Core cards that will go in your deck and stay there as you rank up, but altogether it needs some expansion cards to really push it over the top.
Most of the strongest Deception core cards are spells: Hunting Trap is a 2-mana spell that can get rid of a lot of powerful creatures, Umber Arrow can trade for 2 of your opponent’s creatures (or even give you that extra reach if needed), Cutthroat Insight literally steals a card out of your opponent’s hand plus gives you intel on what they’re holding, and Rapture Dance is a wonderful board clear if your opponent decides to go wide.
More for Aggro decks, these buff spells are dangerous when combined with the Hidden ability. Both give you +3 attack to a creature which is great, but Assassin’s Aim also gives a creature Hidden to be untargetable your next turn; the caveat is that you can’t play it on a 1-health creature because it’ll die from the -1 health. If you play either of these on a high health creature, you can repeatedly hide it with your God Power and keep punching your opponent in the face with the buffed attack. Ouch!
Onto creatures, Switch Duelist is a nice 1-drop that can be used in Aggro or Mid/Control. With Aggro, buffing it up with a Dark Knives can make it hard to remove and also deal 6 damage to your opponent! Inconspicuous Carriage is a decent Frontline to give you some breathing room against Aggro, and the Bombs can deal a little damage to someone not paying attention when removing it. Witherfingers is a beast in that it gives you a big threat, puts 3 of your opponent’s creatures to Sleep, and gives them Burn! If they don’t die from that one turn of burn, play another and stack it! Or just stall and weaken them enough to unleash a big Rapture Dance next turn.
A fun little combo that might not be competitive in the highest ranks is Dart Maniac + Uncanny Rogue. Give that maniac Deadly and his darts will kill whoever it hits as long as they don’t have Armor or Protected!
I’ll go over some of the cheaper expansion cards which are good value for your deck, and for Deception there are quite a lot of great inexpensive staples that you should invest in if you like playing this God.
Patient Pickpocket (~0.5 GODS) is a great Mid/Control 1-drop that gives you card advantage as well as information about your opponent’s deck. Armor Lurker (4 GODS) is an amazing 2-drop that is used in almost all Deception decks, and is probably one of the best 2-mana creatures in the game; more often than not it trades for 2 or more creatures.
For Hidden Aggro decks, Arms Dealer (0.6 GODS) can provide the additional firepower to finish off your opponent, and Whisper Baron (1.7) can be quite lethal especially if you’re playing Guild creatures, which you should be as Deception has plenty of good ones. Surprise Delivery (1.3) is a spell mostly used in Aggro decks to deal face damage and also clog up your opponent’s board for a couple of turns, which can really slow them down if they’re playing an Aggro type deck as well.
Stoneskin Poison (0.8 GODS) is very good 1-mana spell that can remove a creature or at least keep them at bay for a few turns, which is good for setting up a Rapture Dance or Witherfingers on the next turn as well. Moreover, it’s another way for Hidden Aggro to disable a Frontline to attack face. Bound By Her Will (0.35) takes control of a 1-attack creature (even through Ward) and works great with the strength reducing creatures that Deception has; there are many great targets for this and even a plain 1/3 creature stolen can swing the battle in your favor. Lastly, Counterfeit (3) is the best type of relic removal there is… because you steal it! Another fantastic way to turn the tides of battle.
For some higher cost cards, we have Merrick (~ 21.3 GODS) who is amazing in Hidden Aggro decks as it can copy a creature’s attack and do that damage again, which is devastating when that other creature has been buffed with Dark Knives and/or Assassin’s Aim. Lady Marcella (24) can be used in various decks and provides 5/5 worth of stats for 3-mana with 2 sources of Deadly. Its Afterlife can even benefit you as you can use Umber Arrow to gain another Deadly attack; even if you can’t use it for your own good, you can use your God Power to get rid of them, or strength reduction to render them useless. Pietro, Merry Bandit (22) is another great addition to Hidden Aggro, as it gives another round of Hidden to your creatures and also summons 2 more. Shadow of Lethenon (94) and Shade Walker (87) are two more Hidden creatures that would do well in your Aggro deck; if you can land a Dark Knives on the former at the beginning of a game, it’s going to be very tough for your opponent if they can’t remove it.
I’ve provided some example decks here for Mid/Control using Welcome and Core deck as you’re first starting out to build towards, then budget Mid/Control and Aggro decks with some expansion cards, then finally more expensive versions of those decks. These cards and decks aren’t set in stone; feel free to experiment and check out GUDecks.com for more! There are a lot of cards that can do well which aren’t mentioned here.
This is the 6th part of the series. For Light, click here. For Magic, click here. For War, click here. For Nature, click here. For the Introduction and Neutral Cards, click here