Don't let Gato's cute face deceive you; this little fella means business and it's ready to shred hands away alongside its best friend Tome Golem. As a Combo-Control deck, Banjo Gato plays a slow, calculated game. It whittles down the opponent's resources until it's ready to kick off an insane combo with Tome Golem as the centerpiece.
The Deck:
I'm almost tempted to rename this deck Banjo Tome Golem, as this card is front and center for all of the decks game winning combos and likely the most important finisher for the deck. To get an understanding of the power of Tome Golem and what this deck is capable of at its peak, let's start by examining these combos to see our endgame before diving into how we get there.
The infamous Gato combo relies on a quirk with Tome Golem that we'll need to remember for the rest of this Deck Tech; Tome Golem's Inspire triggers off the current mana cost of a spell, not the true mana cost. This means any time we use cost reduction effects to make a spell cost 1, it will trigger Tome Golem's Inspire and become copied, even if its original cost is 2 or more. With that in mind, the first step to this combo is playing Tome Golem followed Sapphire, which doubles Tome Golem's inspire triggers. Since Gato costs 1, it will copy itself twice. Next we play Ponderous (or Thought Leader as an alternative option), which reduces the cost of Gato's Sudden Gust to 1. We then cast each Gato's Sudden Gust which copies itself twice thanks to Tome Golem & Sapphire, which clears away our opponents entire hand and generates enough banner for a huge hero attack. If that's not enough to finish the game off, our massive board presence of a 5/7 Tome Golem, 5/5 Sapphire, and 3 Gatos is more than enough to close the game out next turn when our opponent only has 1 draw to get out of the situation. In some match ups, especially against aggro, it isn't necessary to do the full combo with Sapphire as they'll likely have few cards in hand. In these cases it may be better to play Sapphire out beforehand in conjunction with some other powerful inspire cards before playing the rest of the combo to put the game out of reach.
The second combo is more of an OTK (One-turn-kill) style combo than the one using Gato which is more concerned with denying your opponent resources. It starts similarly by playing Tome Golem followed by Sapphire (noticing a trend here). It then diverges from the Gato combo by playing Nimbus, which gives each spell that costs 1 or higher banner, and then Matchstick which comes attached with Scorch. With Scorch costing 1 (we can't play Ponderous in this scenario), each cast on the opposing hero will copy twice for 6 damage and 3 banner adding up to a total of 9 damage per Scorch. That's 27 damage already and from there we just need to cast one or two 1-cost spells in hand to make up the final bit of damage.
If neither of these plans come together because of game circumstances, we also have the back-up plan of mix and matching any of these combo pieces to dump as many 1-cost cards as possible into the graveyard to set up for a huge Unophobia. We take advantage of another of Tome Golem's quirks in that it puts a fresh card of each copied spell into the yard - with just Sapphire, Ponderous, and Tome Golem's attached Cross reference, you can dump 18 one-costs into the yard alone. Similarly, you can abuse Torques' Micron Drone trigger with Sapphire on the board to sacrifice as many 1-cost Micron Drones to the cause as possible.
Each of these combos are extremely mana intensive, with some needing more than 16 mana to work off an empty board. To help our deck get to the position where it can even pull off a combo like this, we need a combination of three things; mana ramp to accelerate the combo, healing to keep us alive long enough to get there, and board clears / removal to get rid of any threats along the way.
For mana ramp we play the tried and true duo of Gift of Aya and Gigabloom, Miss Aya herself, and Take Root. Between these 4 cards we can accelerate our mana by 5 permanently, and can sometimes even 'burst' our way to a Combo-finish ahead of schedule thanks to Miss Aya's inspire trigger. Since Banjo Gato is so mana hungry, our plan for the early game typically involves playing Gift of Aya as fast as possible, often utilizing Eldritch Lore at 5 to do so (which also clears any Roots attached by Take Root). Gift will draw Gigabloom, giving us a natural follow-up play to further ramp our mana.
While we ramp, it's helpful to play some cheap road blocks to keep our opponent from beating us down which come in the form of Whipvine, Spirit of Sleep, Giza, and Niko. Each of these units cost 2 or less, which means we can play them in the same turn as Gigabloom, and provide some relief from any early aggression. They each have some additional synergy, with Whipvine pairing well with Miss Aya, Spirit of Sleep clearing Take Root on death, and Giza drawing Tome Golem (our most important card) from the deck. Niko always taking a slot in the starting hand means we'll have some early defense no matter what.
When we're done playing our ramp spells it'll typically be around turn 6-8, at which point it's likely your opponent will have amassed a formidable board. To deal with this situation, we play a suite of expensive board clears like Glitch Break, Mass Confusion, and Extinction Event. These huge board wipes set the stage for us to take control of the game take advantage of our superior mana advantage.
As emergency 'board-wipes' in case an opponents board grows too explosively, we play Overdraft and Nature's Grasp. Banjo Gato typically plays with a huge hand size, so Overdraft can deal with most early game boards and Nature's Grasp can severely hinder decks that go wide while also providing an option to draw combo pieces like Gato and Matchstick from Elderwood death triggers.
Each of the ramp cards (aside from Take Root) double up as heals for our hero so that we can hopefully live long enough to take advantage of the extra mana, but we'll likely take a beating as we take turns off without contributing to the board. For more dedicated healing, we play Jakintsu which also takes advantage of the decks typically large hand size like Overdraft, Nerfurti which combos nicely with Take Root by cleansing the Roots enchanted to your hero, and Archivist. Archivist deserves a special mention, as it draws 1-cost cards with its attached cross reference which leads nicely into turns with Tome Golem. In some aggro match-ups it may also be beneficial to play Sapphire early in conjunction with Archivist to double up on Archivist's inspire trigger and get a quick boost of health and sometimes setting up for a Tome Golem the next turn if Sapphire lives til then.
With these key categories of cards outlined, a bigger picture of playing Banjo Gato emerges. Our general game-plan will look something like this:
Turns 1-6: Ramp and play roadblocks
Turns 7-13: Heal up & control the board with board wipes & Torques
Turns 14+ Combo off with Tome Golem / Kill with Unophobia
Obviously that's not a hard and fast rule, but its how games should go if things are going according to plan. The hardest part of playing Banjo Gato is knowing when to deviate - basically when to play out combo pieces rather than saving them in your hand. Remember that many of combos are varied and interchangeable with Tome Golem being the only central piece - as long as you save Tome Golem you can risk playing out some of the other pieces early. As I've mentioned in several other places, Sapphire is not essential to the combo, though it does super-power it. If you need to play a piece out early, Sapphire is typically a good candidate, especially since it interacts so well with Torques and Archivist. Likewise, if you can commit to a specific combo, the other pieces are less important. As a general rule of thumb, the Gato combo is more effective against control decks while the Matchstick combo works better against aggro - that being said its reasonable to play Gato out early against aggro and Nimbus against control as a few examples.
Conclusion:
Banjo Gato is a skill testing deck that requires deep breaths as you seemingly win from the brink against Aggro decks. That being said, it has some of the best tools out of any deck in Skyweaver, giving it the option to attack from several different angles while maintaining a consistent and rewarding game-plan. Master Banjo gato and you'll be well on your way to mastering Skyweaver itself.
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