June 7th Webcam Premier Top 16 Breakdown
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Published
Firestorm is here and with the first premier tournament wrapped up we finally have data to draw from and build a picture of the metagame with. Once again I’ll be your guide to the early Firestorm format as we look through all the lists that performed, this time extended to top 16 for a clearer picture of the unknown early metagame.
As always before we dive in, I’d first like to walk you all through the three questions that I want to try and answer with my analysis. It doesn’t matter how many graphs or data points you have - if you don’t know what you’re looking for you’ll never be able to draw conclusions deeper than “wow, this line sure is going down” and obviously that’s not very productive!
This article will aim to cover:
- What types of decks saw success in the first premier of Firestorm
- What tech cards players saw success with
- What kind of deck is best positioned for the next event.
Top 16 - Nickyt0wn
Deck Type: Spiders
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
Let the record show that what I am about to say will apply to every Spider list you’ll see after this and I will keep referring to this mini-essay as we move forward. I’m going to be a hater but not as much towards this list in particular as towards Spiders as a whole. I’ve spent far too long labbing spiders to not be very opinionated and these early lists are the exact opposite of all my findings. This is a very standard build of spiders, built fully around the 2-card combos the deck is (currently) known for. It plays Jolten to find Arachne’s Lair more consistently alongside power cards like Kindleo and Hestia for additional board control.
I am unfortunately now going to have to be very mean because this is why I think this deck is bad. I strongly believe that the individual card quality in this style of brew is so far below every other meta list that even on a good day it should be completely unable to make it past top 8. There are multiple Spider lists in and around top 16, but none in top 8 because all of them follow the exact same flawed philosophy and on-rails deckbuilding. This style of deckbuilding introduces so many points of failure and ways to brick that it creates a messy pile of cards that will always fold in the face of equally skilled players on more solid, consistent and overall better decks.
I plan to elaborate on these points further in a future article, but in short, taking a critical eye to any of these 2 card combos immediately makes them crumble when compared to much lower investment plays like normal cast Vysceris. The core concept of the Spider deck is that all your little weenies punch up extremely well and Lair makes them cantrips right? So as deckbuilders we have to ask:
“Why is Parachne good?”
Parachne
It punches over stuff exactly as well as Warmite - Champion of Hestia, but for double the spirit cost and a higher strain on spirit math. You could argue stats on the opponent’s turn make it better, but does that really outweigh the added spirit investment? Realistically what’s the meaningful difference between casting Warmite Champion with a set Tsunami for protection vs just casting Parachne and dying to any interaction? Even if we’re generous to Parachne and say the set that protects Warmite Champion costs 2, that’s still just 1 spirit more - but now our cards are better on average and don’t rot in hand in the world where we haven’t found Arachne’s Lair. The other justification I hear for Parachne is that it’s the only spider that handles attack and defense position Elestrals, but this simply isn’t true. Have you read Kitemite?
Coming back to Warmite Champion, I believe it should not justify Hestia’s Hearth being included. Hearth is a very strong card when paired with Warmite Champion, however it accomplishes nothing with any other card in the deck. For an example, if you draw Hearth with a hand of Kitemite, Astrabbit, Gorgon’s Gaze, Jolten and Ambrosia you have functionally drawn a blank card. Yes, there are some minor applications like refilling a Hestia or keeping Kitemite alive after a chained Gorgon’s Gaze but none of those are good uses of a slot in an already tight 40 cards. Looking at Nickyt0wn’s list we see only 9 “real” counter runes. Imagine how much better the deck could be if Hearth was Altar of Stars, which can serve the same purpose of triggering Warmite Champion off-turn but also has effect text without building around seeing the weakest of the 1-cost mites alongside it.
Hestia is also bad - at least with the current card pool - because it’s a card that functionally has no effect text. All Hestia is capable of accomplishing is taking an additional game action, which could be an incredible effect but only when paired with a payoff worth spending a card in and multiple spirits on. The logic behind Hestia is pretty clear, the win state of Spiders is to have a wide field of spiders, but she isn’t even the second best way to accomplish this goal. Think about it, she can’t cast half the mites, is extremely expensive for little impact and melts your hand without exactly Lair up. Hestia in Spiders is inherently a 3+ card combo, because you need at minimum a spider to threaten the board, Hestia herself and then an additional fire spider to keep pressure up. Even with Lair as our 4th card in hand, we still only get 2 cards back unless the first spider is Kitemite. This means we end our turn with only 2-3 cards in hand that could protect our board and are at risk of getting completely run over by a single Soarlet - Champion of Aeolus or Gnawbie.
This leads me into my final major gripe with many Spider builds - Arachne’s Lair is holding you back. In the comments of his most recent Every Deck stream, Trishula describes the problems at the core of Arachne’s Lair from a card advantage perspective, but Lair also warps deckbuilding in very noticeable ways and creates a myriad of “traps” for the player to fall into before the event has even begun. Take, for example, Jolten.
Jolten
The idea is that Lair is good, so we want to find Lair. This is a fine enough idea but there’s a major problem with it when you start thinking about what redundant copies of Lair actually do. Lair is not a card that’s good in multiples, so drawing Lair or Jolten off lair is functionally the same as not drawing a card at all - especially when you factor in Jolten’s underwhelming base statline. Over the course of a long game you can find Lair with 3 copies and Astrabbit, so why play a card that doesn’t advance the game plan and muddies your mid-to-late game draws? Why cast a 4/2 that doesn’t advance your gameplan better than casting Astrabbit would?
Similarly, Lair mentions a very large number of cards which leads into a wider deckbuilding philosophy of
not giving mice cookies.
Deckbuilding is about striking a fine balance between each card in the deck to maximize your odds of having the card you need when you’ll need it, and one of the easiest ways to upset that balance is to give the mouse a cookie and play a card not because you should but because you can. For example, back in Daybreak a common line of thought was “well if I’m playing Eddy I may as well also play Rock and a Hard Place, and if I’m playing Rock then what’s the harm in playing Kurabyss too?” and that resulted in players wasting spirits on underpowered removal and bricking on ascensions that weren’t worth their place in the 40. These players never stopped to think about where the line was and ran weak cards just because a good card listed it by name, and you’d do well to reevaluate these Spider decks with that fresh in our mind.
This mouse in particular has so many cookies that it’s not even funny, and I’m pretty certain the line was about 2 copies of Parachne ago.
I really believe all of the problems with this archetype stem from giving these mice too many cookies because the end result is a deck that feels great in the early rounds of swiss but cannot move past good players that know to prepare for Spiders and have far more consistent lists. I expect we’ll continue to see Spiders in top 16 a lot, but I would be genuinely shocked if they made it to top 8 until the fundamental theories behind Spider decks change.
I suppose I should give some amount of analysis about this exact list beyond general Spider theory, for the most part it’s solid. The side is pretty well built and the spirit deck does a fine job accommodating the main. My one complaint is that I think Lavalith should be in the main, but overall Nickyt0wn did a good job with the parts surrounding the bloated core of the deck. I’d like to see their future Spider lists slim down the core engine because they definitely have a strong idea of what the rest of the deck should look like.
Top 16 - JacqueKeener
Deck Type: Lunar Aggro
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
Sorry in advance if you expected every deck to get an equal amount of analysis as Spiders did, I don’t have nearly as much to say about most of these (and his editor might kill him if he did -MONO).
This looks to be a slight modification of SirTractor’s 5s deck from the PNM and it’s still a great deck. Werepup is a truly nasty card to stare down, especially backed up by all the best Elestrals available, like Vysceris, Specteris and Astrabbit. There are a few changes I would like to see made, but all of them are in the side deck. To me, the current side looks very unfocused, with a seemingly random 1-of Magnetic Forcefield alongside the 3rd Tsunami and Poison Tipped Arrow. I believe Magnetic Forcefield is the kind of card you want in multiples because you can’t search it and I’ve never been a big fan of siding additional copies of staple counter runes.
All in all this is a very strong list that fell just short of higher placements, potentially because of the issues with the side. Generally speaking, when you build a side always ask yourself what matchup you’d need to bring in any specific card for. If you can’t come up with a clear answer that card shouldn’t be there.
Top 16 - Shadow_Storm
Deck Type: Drakking (ft. Geist)
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
This is a difficult deck to figure out where to start on, it seems to be a hybrid of my top 8 Pharogeist deck from early Moonrise and my top 8 Drakking deck from the PNM. I do believe both these decks are very capable, but I have my doubts that the decks are capable of sharing space. Here we see the debut of a popular Werepup theory, which is playing a single copy of Werepup - Champion of Artemis (hereafter referred to as Champup) so Lycavoid - Champion of Artemis represents 4 bodies rather than 3. I do feel this is overkill, and increasing the brick count on the Werepup package is rather dubious but this isn’t the last time we’ll see the concept. It’s definitely a piece of theory worth keeping an eye on not just for this analysis but also down the line.
Like every other top 16 list, our goal when we look is not just to find out why they succeeded but also why they failed - and here I think the answer is just the lack of focus. In my opinion playing 2 different decks with different play patterns must’ve negatively impacted Shadow_Storm’s winrate, and the 7 “bad draws” in artifacts, ascensions, Full Moon and Champup definitely didn’t help.
Top 16 - RyBot
Deck Type: Spiders
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
This is card for card Nickyt0wn’s main and spirit deck, but with a different side. I actually think Nicky’s list is a good bit better, because it plays higher value cards like Lavalith even if they’re in the side and has more coverage with cards like Spoiled Fruit. I already gave my two cents on every other bad card in this deck except Flarachne - Champion of Hestia, so let’s talk about that. I’m convinced Flarachne Champion is a very bad card because it’s an unsearchable, 5 spirit, 3 card combo to do what Jolten - a card we already established is bad - does by itself. The burn effect does not save it from unplayability until we get a card that stops the opponent from being able to attack.
If you want deeper analysis on why I think this deck only bubbled or why I don’t like this approach to Spiders, please reread the start of this article.
Top 16: Heximetrix
Deck Type: Nyximera 5s
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
Here we see the closest Nyximera list to converting, and if you look closely you’ll notice that it’s just 5s. A very common trend I’ve noticed when playing against Nyximera is that when Nyximera comes down they lose and when it doesn’t they win, so the number one question I’ve had about the deck has always been why Nyximera is there to begin with. Nyximera’s complete absence from top 8 points towards me being right, but I’m very open to being proven wrong because I enjoy these cards too.
The main is extremely solid and the spirits are good, I think Heximetrix could’ve gotten away with 1 less lunar to free up space in the side but it’s a minor change. The big thing that I don’t think works here is the 1-of Divine Blessing and Spoiled Fruit in the side, but this player is from an area where finding singles is hard so I don’t think that was an intentional deckbuilding misstep. Overall this was a great first showing from a very capable player, and I look forward to seeing her name pop up more often in the future.
Top 16: Antmph
Deck Type: Pigs
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
Here we see another take on the 5s-style deck, this time with a heavy emphasis on wind and the Soarlets for threatening multi-attacks. Almost every Elestral here can threaten the Lycavoid board with Zeus, if not on their own. It’s a great meta call and I really love hurricane decks with double attackers right now. This is a great option in general, well positioned into the current best deck and has game into other common options like Fire Artifact and Spiders thanks to Galaxair’s stat swaps beating a lot of interaction like Argo and Poison Tipped Arrow.
Once again I think the side was a little too messy for its own good, it starts strong but the Specteris package taking 5 sideboard slots is bulkier than it needs to be, the 3rd Cryoblast is also unnecessary. I feel those slots would likely be better used on other cards. With some slight tuning I think this deck would be a great pick moving forward and I look forward to Antmph’s next iteration.
Top 16 - Me :D
Deck Type: Champions of Apollo
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
I guess the first thing I should explain is how I came around on Champions of Apollo at all, because only 3 players brought Apollo decks to the event and one of them was copying an older build I brought to locals the week before. I really like Cows, it was one of the first decks I tried to actively lab and as such it has a special place in my heart. Solbelle - Champion of Apollo also looked like it had to be good every time I read it and Lyre of Apollo is insane as an anthem effect, so I threw a quick list together. While it didn’t feel strong, it was so much fun that I knew I had to lab it out. A week of experimentation later I had 2 options for this premier: Lycavoid Whalance and Champions of Apollo. I couldn’t choose so I sent a friend of mine who doesn’t play a picture of Solbelle and Narpoon and asked them to pick off vibes alone, and now we’re here.
I have absolute confidence in the maindeck, I don’t think the current cardpool can support any changes I would want to make and while the spirits look very early Daybreak you really do need that many solar spirits. The side is messy however and I should’ve had Mt. Olympus as my stadium of choice instead of Temple of the Sun. I totally underestimated how important hitting over Brumalynxes was. I don’t think that was the difference maker in my first loss to BeanSoldier, but it definitely would’ve at least let me put up something resembling a fight.
Khafmel also never came in, and would likely be better as Drataura. On top of that, honestly the loss that knocked me out of contention for topcut was 100% player error. This deck is hard and by round 6 my head was sludge. I played really poorly, and that’s also an important factor to reflect on.
Top 16 - Serthes
Deck Type: Lunar Aggro
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
Here we see another slightly modified version of SirTractor’s Lunar Aggro deck, but this time opting to play Verutouca over Vysceris, although I can’t say for certain what they were aiming to hit with it. The side deck is a lot more focused than JacqueKeener’s which could explain why Serthes placed higher, but ultimately both players ended outside of top 8, so saying one performed better than another doesn’t mean a great deal.
There’s a few dated choices in the side, for example the inclusion of Cockatoodle despite it being common knowledge now that Cockatoodle doesn’t actually beat Werepup. I have to wonder how often that came up for Serthes. The 1-of Lunar Phase - Waxing Gibbous is a pinch of old Werepup theory, that you only need the 1 because werepup searches it, but I don’t think it really applies to Lycavoid Champion because resolving your first Werepup means you get all the other pups out of the deck, and searching Waxing Gibbous with your first Werepup means giving up on the incredible push searching Full Moon provides. Cockatoodle and Waxing Gibbous aside, this is an incredible deck and I’m not even remotely surprised that it came this close to topping.
Top 8 - Johnny S
Deck Type: Fire Artifact
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
Here we see the traditional Fire Artifact build, very well built. I have no real complaints or notes to be honest, the ratios are solid, the deck is solid, there isn’t much else to say. I guess if I had to nitpick - which I do - I’d want to see the sided frost spirit in main but given that solar spirits for Helialith made it in over the frost I think it’s clear he tried to fit all 3 tech spirits in and couldn’t find space.
Potentially if I was building my take I’d want to fit Vysceris in since we already have the correct spirit math thanks to Scythe of Demeter, but again this is a very clean build already. Not shocked at all seeing it succeed!
Top 8 - SorenPlays
Deck Type: Blizzard Combo
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
I’m still in shock from looking at this list for too long. I know it’s a strong player taking a half decent gameplan further than it should’ve gone but I just can’t get over what may as well be a mono-frost deck topping. I have a good amount of changes I’d want to make to this that I’ll go over later, but Soren was kind enough to talk through my questions after watching his deck profile so I see no reason to be mean when I don’t have to. It’s worth noting that the side has 3 copies of Spoiled Fruit, but the deck profile had those slots filled by 2 Mistral of Boreas and 1 Pandora’s Box. I have been told these are inaccurate and that Spoiled Fruit is correct. In the future to improve the consistency and flexibility I would like to see more off-element cards like Astrabbit, Tsunami, Earthquake and Narpoon make the cut. Overall this is a shocking top that I don’t expect to see again, but I’m interested to see myself proven wrong by new innovations on the deck.
Top 8 - Doomraider
Deck Type: Pharogeist
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
Once again Doomraider made it to top cut on Pharogeist, but this list is a lot more optimized than the list we saw last time I made a breakdown article. Shaving the underwhelming solar package in favor of an expanded earth core featuring Equilynx and Vysceris is a great touch. Once again we see the lone Champup to make Lycavoid Champion more threatening, but I don’t really think it’s needed. Yes, casting a playset of pups can be scary but at the end of the day it's just giving mice cookies. This was the highest placing Champup deck in the event, but not the highest placing Werepup deck, which is worth keeping in mind. I really dislike the second Lunar Phase - Full Moon here as well, it's unnecessary and the space could be better spent on other cards like a third Komalice. Overall a very solid deck piloted by a very solid player, but there are points where improvements can likely still be made and I look forward to the next time I see Doomraider’s name making top cut.
Top 8 - Trishula
Deck Type: Lunar Aggro
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
Once again we see a 5s-style Lunar deck succeed, so far the most represented deck in top 16. The main core of Vysceris, Werepup and Galaxea - Champion of Poseidon create a really nasty lineup of threats that demand immediate answers. Pairing this with the best supporting cards in the game and a small Soarlet package to answer Lycavoid boards and it’s no wonder Trishula was able to make it to top 8 before only just losing to a testing partner. I have no real notes - it’s 5s after all - but I would like to point out Peliquarius, which is a standout card right now. Being able to put up a well-statted Elestral while searching Galaxea - Champion of Poseidon puts your opponent in a really nasty lose-lose situation. If they meet your turn 1 pelican with slower play they get hit by a near guaranteed pin on anything weaker than an Aeromare, but trying to grab tempo gets punished by the known Galaxea. It’s a really powerful play more people should look into.
Top 4 - Shurit
Deck Type: KryoRhino
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
This deck is going to be very difficult for me to talk about in anything resembling an unbiased way since I had to be its punching bag for a while when I was playtesting Champions of Apollo. To make a long story short, the deck is really good. The breakout star of Firestorm is definitely Brumalynx Champion, very few players came in ready to win a stadium war and the massive amount of frost converting off the back of the Brum proves that was a mistake. I can’t really say I expect to see a repeat performance from the card now that it’s on people’s radars though.
KryoRhino is still a solid deck and it’s incredibly difficult to deal with a Rhinosect backed up with Hurricane. SirTractor has proven time and time again that it’s a deck to fear no matter how far we get from Daybreak and now Shurit carries the torch with his own build. This deck rules, but also I hate this deck so much.
Top 4 - SpicySausage
Deck Type: Drakking
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
I told you all it was a good deck, I don’t understand why nobody listens to me when I say these things. The story behind this one is that 2 days before the premier Spicy asked me if I was around to test because he wanted to play Drakking, we hopped in call and talked through the changes I wanted to make after ending my PNM run at top 8 on the deck and now here we are.
I really hated cutting Foamee to only 2 copies, but we had to make space for the main deck Sluggle - a piece I really missed during the PNM. The spirit math was adjusted as well by adding extra water spirits so the well doesn’t dry up, but most of the changes were to the side. A Jolten package was added with Mt. Olympus as a mechanism to beat Spiders and frost decks reliant on Brumalynx Champion, along with an Argo suite to win combat against decks like Whalance that can go over the top of the 7 stats Drakking plays and turn the tables on early Lycavoids.
Overall this is a very well positioned strategy and one I fully expect to continue performing throughout the rest of the Firestorm metagame. It’s no wonder a player as good as SpicySausage took it to a clean top 4 finish.
Runner-Up - ArcaicRage
Deck Type: Fire Artifact
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
This is a tough one, I have a lot that I want to cover here but no strong idea where to start. The core idea of the deck is very good, it’s standard Fire Artifact with a lot of receivers to get additional value out of the near game-winning Kindleo effect but the ratios and small packages are very far removed from the standard. These changes could’ve been why ArcaicRage was able to do so well in their first premier since Daybreak, because there are a lot of things to like about this list. For starters, I absolutely love playing only a single copy of Hephaestus. It’s pretty common to play 2 in case your opponent removes it, which will happen more often these days thanks to Titanostrike - Champion of Zeus in addition to the usual Lavalith, but I don’t think that’s worth building for. Having Hephaestus up makes your Volcaries - Champion of Hephaestus extremely powerful, but in most realistic situations you can live without Volcaries’ effect to recycle spirits. As we’ve already discussed with Spiders, I put value on a more compact deck that has a higher individual card quality over backup copies of combo pieces. Also worth noting is the maindeck inclusion of Volcanic Forge. 3 out of the top 4 lists were ready to win a stadium war in game 1, and the odd one out had a Jolten package in the side. It’s clear to me that the most successful decks of Firestorm use stadiums.
For as much as I like the theory behind the main engine, I find the ratios of the generics present confusing. Cards like Argo and Hurricane are very good cards, and should traditionally be played in multiples but only appear here as 1-ofs. The side is equally messy, with additional copies of staples like Poison Tipped Arrow and Shield of Achilles taking up space alongside a stray Reforge and pair of Eddies. Most confusing is the 1-of Stoke the Forge, it almost feels like there should be a Rummacoal somewhere but it’s just… not. I think if this side was a little tighter with more cards like Boombatt there was a world where ArcaicRage took finals over BeanSoldier, but that’s just a what-if we’ll have to dwell on.
Winner - BeanSoldier
Deck Type: Blizzstrix
Main Deck
Spirit Deck
Side Deck
I hate this man. In swiss we paired into each other and he went Snowlet hit double Cedarsaur with Mountains of Boreas up.
This deck is still good, I’ve been preaching that Blizzstrix is still playable since the Rise From the Ashes limit was announced but nobody believed me. Now the deck has its first ever premier win and apparently nobody saw it coming. That being said Josh put it best in his deck profile on the Nauts channel - Blizzstrix is likely never going to work again. The main reason behind its success this time was a lack of post-board preparation from the average deckbuilder. Divine Blessing no longer has a great target and Boombatt fell out of favor, with a good portion of the top 16 decks not including it in their sides. It really was the perfect storm for Blizzstrix, a field where nobody is ready to out unprotected 3 cost Elestrals or play a stadium war. Pairing that perfect opening with one of the best players of all time was a recipe for success.
LOOKING FORWARD
Now that we know what performed, let’s see what could change these decks or the expected metagame going into the next premier. Lycavoid still remains the driving force of the metagame, despite its absence in finals. Lycavoid decks took up 3 slots in top 8, which is a number that demands respect. For this reason I also expect to see a large spike in players on Jolten and Mt. Olympus, to combat the Brumalynx Champion decks that took up the same amount of space in topcut. It’s also entirely possible players get even more experimental and side Foloi Forest - Burning Woods to punish expensive plays like using Emphrostix to revive Brumalynx Champion and reestablish Boreas. There are a lot of potential options moving into the next event as players explore more with the cardpool to find techs.
The breakout techs of this event were the Soarlet suite and Stadiums, unsuspecting Lycavoid players were eaten alive by the piggy package and nowhere near enough players were prepared to play against a permanent +1/+1 buff. As for what I think is best positioned, I’m a little conflicted on which is the “correct” answer.
I have my eye on 2 different decks, one proven and one less so. Drakking is still incredible and will be for as long as Lycavoid Champion and Galaxea Champion are around, but my sleeper pick for the next premier is actually Voltempest.
Voltempest
Any deck that can play wind spirits is in a great spot because of Peliquarius giving them a high density of turn 1 power plays - all of which can convert to a Griffuse. Similarly, Soarlet - Champion of Aeolus gives wind excellent ways to challenge Lycavoid and being base thunder makes Jolten a power play similar to Brumalynx Champion. It’s well positioned into frost decks, it’s well positioned into Lycavoid, and the majority of decks in the current meta aren’t equipped to beat a 13 attacker they can’t target. It sounds like an easy pick to me.
That’s all I have to say about this event, and as always shoutout to my editor MONO for making my work readable. Cy@
Reviewing decks from the latest webcam premier and identifying well-positioned decks to prepare for the next.