What does it take to win with a tribal deck in Skyweaver? Fox Metal packs a punch by buffing a tribe full of strong, armored units while utilizing their disrupting abilities to attack a diverse metagame.
The Deck:
The Metal tribe features primarily smaller units that rely on their Armor ability to stay alive rather than a wealth of HP. Their lackluster stats are backed up by this key ability so its beneficial to look for ways to buff Metal units to take advantage of it. So how can we pump up our metal units and press the advantage we get from Armor? First we have Glorious Mane to add some quick stats to the board, but more importantly, to buff every Metal unit in your deck for the rest of the game. It's consistent value as the game goes on. More explosively, Jungle Guide comes onto the battlefield and buffs your in-hand units after you play any metal card. Luckily, Jungle Guide comes with a built-in metal spell, Impale, that can deal with some smaller units and hopefully set up a turn for him to survive.. If the guide survives to your next turn, you can potentially play as many metal cards as possible and make your units absolutely huge. Combine these two cards and your dorky Mechurai won't be looking so dorky for long! We've got a total of 22 Metal Cards in the deck to take advantage of these two amazing enablers.
Some of our Metal units get huge benefits from growing past their normal size. Drill Bot is best in class, dealing a huge chunk of damage to both an unsuspecting unit and your opponent when it comes out on to the field. Cyber Sniper, while usually potent at dealing with small threats, can get out of hand when it snipes 4/4 and 5/5 units at no cost. On another spectrum, a buffed Honor Guard represents a brick wall for many decks. As we spend the early game positioning for a turn to buff our units, these powerful Mid-game options bridge Metal Fox to the endgame and make up for any lost tempo.
More exciting than armored units though are the disruption elements that Metal units bring to the table. One powerful strategy in Skyweaver involves abusing death effects and recurring units from the grave, which Righteous and Xero deal with cleanly. Righteous is by far the better of the two, preventing any triggers from happening on the board while simultaneously keeping them out of the yard. On another axis, Sonic jammer and Geod punish spell based control decks by locking them out of a key turn. Crusher Shines in the mirror match or against any decks looking to abuse armor to keep their units safe from harm.
Rounding out our collection of Metal units is a suite of powerful removal spells like Backstab, Fire Rune, Snap Trap, and Drone Surge to deal with any early game aggression, and the One-Two punch of Kha's Wrath and Tiamat's Rage to end a game that's gone on too long. For card advantage we play a lonely Treasure Chest, which hopefully grabs a huge spell in the late-game, but we're generally trying to win before the game gets to that point.
A whole article can be written about this little guy as he has some really interesting, and not entirely obvious, synergies. He's among Metal Fox's best aggressive tools and extremely important for pushing early game damage against control decks. On an optimal turn, the Squire can represent 6 damage between its attack buff and attached Divine Sword spell. He works great with Drone Surge, buffing each drone for 1 attack and for weird sequences utilizing Griff Scout's Bolster to re-arrange units as they gain Guard and change position on the board. The fact that Buster, Squire is also a metal unit is just gravy on top of what is already one of the best 2 mana units in all of Skyweaver.
The Matchups:
Because of Metal Fox's disruption cards, the deck is well positioned against most of the true control and combo decks in the metagame. Sonic Jammer is an allstar against these decks, sometimes taking whole turns from their gameplan. Righteous is gamebreaking versus Sitti and at its best when dusting an opposing Flame Cannon or Pharonis. A wealth of units with Armor also spells trouble for any decks focused on abusing Micron Drones and Zap.
The deck struggles versus Big Strength decks like Titus and Horik, but we play a single Mortal Blow to help deal with any large threats that are cheated out. It also has trouble against other Fox decks that forego the Metal package for straight burn damage and high value cards.
One alternate consideration would be to add Puppet Strings in the event that you expect to face a lot of Mechshroom decks.
For mulligans, the key cards to keep in your starting hand are our enablers, Glorious Mane and Jungle Guide, though I find having both in the start can be overkill. Against aggressive decks, keeping Chakra or Fire Rune to deal with early starts is important, as well as Mechurai for an early Banner. After that keeping Sonic Jammer and Righteous depending on the match up, and Steam Knight / Drill Bot as a powerful midgame card to cast.
Conclusion:
If you're looking for a fun, aggressive deck, be sure to give this one a try. The Metal theme is powerful and a cool concept for a deck as more cards come out to shore-up the strategy. Keep a look out for low-cost metal units in the future and this deck should get a huge boost!
Stay tuned for more Deck Techs in the future.
Cheers and thanks for reading.
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