Notable cards leaving SV from TotG

The next Shadowverse expansion Brigade of the Sky has been announced, and when that drops the next Rotation cycle will happen. Tempest of the Gods will be leaving, so I wanted to write about the cards that I am going to miss as well as the cards that I am happy to see leave just like my similar post for RoB. TotG is widely considered to be one of the worst Shadowverse expansions ever(along with WD), as it created a terrible meta and had a lot of badly designed cards. The expansion was also a huge powercreeping one. Rise of Bahamut already raised the power level of the game quite a bit, but Tempest turned it up to eleven. It is entirely possible that the extreme powercreep was an intentional one resulting from the set theme, which was godly power.

The developers went on record saying that they intentionally pushed Dragon, Shadow, and Blood in Tempest. While things did not quite pan out for Blood in this meta, Dragon and Shadow completely took over the game with a slew of grossly overtuned cards. It created the most unbalanced meta that the game has seen since Standard. Just look at that disparity between the highest and lowest winrate class!

The Tempest meta in particular was at an insanely high power level, that many of the strong cards from the set saw absolutely no play. It was only until much later, after Rotation and waves of nerfs had lowered the power levels of the game, that they saw play. This includes cards like Jungle Warden and Chimera. Other cards like Wordwielder Ginger, Gawain of the Round Table, and Support Cannon were considered memes for a long time only to later become meta defining.

Tempest of the Gods was also a big exit point for many people. It’s anecdotal, but a lot of people I know who played SV(both casually and seriously) as well as streamers quit because of this expansion. Other than the awful meta, TotG also started a nasty trend of increasing the amount of class legendaries printed in each expansion. It was now 2 class legendaries each, when it used to be just 1 each in all the previous expansions. This significantly raised the cost of playing the game competitively and made things harder for the F2P players.

Anyway, that is enough negativity. Let’s start with the good things from this expansion!

Cards that I am going to miss

Dark Jeanne by Genyaky

• Belphegor – If I was asked to pick a deck that best represents the spirit of the Bloodcraft class, it would be Vengeance Blood. And nothing embodies the Bloodcraft experience more than Belphegor. Blood to me has always been the high risk, high reward class. The main class mechanic Vengeance is activated when you are at 10 health or lower, which is a very dangerous place to be against many decks. Belphegor herself is slightly overstatted for her cost and has an incredible upside of immediately drawing 2 cards. She does however have a downside of setting your life total to 10, but that ends up being an upside(mostly) in this deck! The idea of an aggressive tempo deck that aimed to put itself into Vengeance to abuse cards like Diabolic Drain and Dark General has been around since the Standard set, but it was wildly inconsistent. Belphegor is who truly enabled this archetype to be a meta contender. The card also has nice art, and great voice work in both Japanese and English. Looking at the cards coming out soon in BotS, Vengeance Blood should live on, but it will not be the same without Belphegor.
• Dark Jeanne – One of the best designed legendaries from this set. Dark Jeanne was widely panned in the set spoilers as most people thought she would only be playable in Storm Haven as a tech card against zoo style decks. Dark Jeanne ended up becoming Haven’s savior in the Tempest of the Gods meta. The pre-nerf first two months of TotG were initially considered to be a 2 deck meta consisting of Dragon and Shadow. But once people figured out that Dark Jeanne was good even in slower decks like Aegis Haven, it expanded to a 3 deck meta. She has a very unique effect, with a 2 dmg global AoE fanfare that also gives a +2 attack buff to any followers who survive. A very skill testing card since it takes some planning to get the most out of her effect, and it could backfire if played on an unfavorable board state. The card also has amazing art(especially evolved), and has one of my favorite Japanese voicelines from the set.
• Death’s Ledger – Affectionately referred to as the Death Note, this was another card like Dark Jeanne that was panned during the TotG spoilers. I think a lot of people saw the effect and dismissed it as RNG nonsense. But because it only summons Shadowcraft followers, a deck can be built to minimize the RNG where the early game followers are mostly Neutrals alongside some key Shadow followers who you want to be sacrificed to the book. This card ended up being quite strong and created a new variant of the beloved Nephthys Shadowcraft archetype. It was also one of the best counters to those scumbag Dragoncraft decks during this meta. There were a lot of different ways to build Ledger Nep, and to this day I don’t think anyone agrees on whether Lurching Ledger or Lich Ledger was better. A real fun card that truly challenged people to build a deck around it. Unfortunately, Ledger has not been viable since WD, since the meta became too fast for it. Nephthys rotating out and the loss of several of Shadow’s good Last Words followers also makes it not viable in the slower Rotation format as well. I will miss this card, and I do hope to see more cards like this in the future.
• Crystalia Aerin – Should honestly say Fanfare: Make aggro decks concede the game. Cygames stated that one of the main archetypes they were pushing in TotG was Control Forest, and the class got a lot of cards to support a late game plan. Aerin is by far the most impactful one with an amazing combination of Ward AND Heal, and even a bonus of restoring an evolution orb if she gets played for 8. OTK Roach and slower Forest decks utilizing White Wolf have been some of my favorite decks to play throughout Shadowverse and Aerin was a key card in all of them, so I will miss her a lot. I am honestly worried about the future of Midrange and Control Forest decks because Aerin was such a critical component of those archetypes. She is prime waifu material too, with an amazing voice in English and Japanese. Narrowly losing the 1st anniversary leader poll to Fairy Princess was heartbreaking.
• Luminous Mage – The Rise of Bahamut expansion turned Sword into Albertcraft, where 3 copies of Maid Leader were run with Albert as the only commander so that it was practically guaranteed to draw Albert every game. The class abandoned a lot of its board based synergies in order to be carried by a grossly overtuned commander card. So it was hard to imagine a card good enough to make the class consider running other commanders. Well Luminous Mage ended up doing just that… but much to my surprise she is actually balanced and a well designed card, unlike Albert. Luminous plays into the Swordcraft class identity(summoning dudes, going wide on board) and interacts with evolution, the primary mechanic that sets Shadowverse apart from other card games. Since you can evolve either the mage herself or the knight, the card has some interesting uses. Luminous Mage has some great art as well, will definitely miss her.
• Mask of the Black Death – One of the coolest cards ever, it was a great boon to Control and Combo based Blood decks. It also gave Bloodcraft a way to protect itself against decks with huge burst damage, which were becoming very common by the time of the TotG meta. In essence, Mask heals your leader for 5 health while costing 2 pp, which sounds completely broken on paper. But it is actually balanced since it is a countdown amulet, so it can be countered by amulet removal or bounce cards like Kaleidoscopic Glow. Playing Mask at the right time could turn matches around. A real skill testing card; I think Blood will get by just fine without it, but I really liked the design and hope to see more of these types of cards in the future.
• Wandering Bard Elta – The vast majority of the strongest cards in Shadowverse are Fanfare followers, so Elta is a really cool hate card that was printed to shut them down. Unfortunately Elta does not see much play since he requires a precious evo point, and does not even gain full stats when evolved. He only really got played in Ginger Rune during the Chronogenesis meta, and nowadays is even cut in most lists since Bahamut is gone from the DBNE Rotation format. It is a shame that the card is so underpowered for such an important and powerful effect… but at the same time he would probably be broken and used in every deck if he was any stronger. I do hope another card like Elta gets printed in the future, because having more options for counterplay is always a good thing.

Cards that I am glad to see go

I should mention that this list pertains to cards in their current state. If I was going to consider them in their original pre-nerf status, this list would be way too long and would include cards like Demonlord Eachtar, Grimnir, Zell, etc.

Sibyl of the Waterwyrm by Nijihara

• Vagabond Frog – Quite possibly the worst designed Shadowverse card of all time. A card game like SV has limited forms of interaction, since you cannot do anything on your opponent’s turn and the attacker gets to dictate the trades. So Ambush ends up being one of the most degenerate mechanics in the entire game, since it takes away what little interaction we have left with our opponent. Frog is even more degenerate since he has permanent Ambush. This card has already gotten nerfed once from costing 3pp to 4pp, but it is still disgusting in its current state. I honestly wonder how this card even got through playtesting. Basically every deck that has used Frog has promoted uninteractive playstyles and I think the game will be in a much better spot without this card around. I also do not think anyone would protest if the Ambush mechanic in general were to be phased out entirely.
• Sibyl of the Waterwyrm – One of the most blatantly overtuned and pushed cards in the entire game. Sibyl was an incredibly lazy way to help out the Dragoncraft class, as she is just a bunch of extremely strong effects stapled onto a body. During the middle of the Starforged Legends meta, Sibyl was finally nerfed from a 4/5 to a 3/4, but is still run as a 3 of in almost every non-aggro Dragon deck. It really shows how broken the original version of the card was. It is hard to believe that cards like Gravekeeper Sonia and Vlad were printed in the same set as Sibyl. While Sibyl is leaving rotation, the DBNE mini expansion printed Filene, who unfortunately has a lot of the same issues as Sibyl. Filene does not fulfill the same role as Sibyl in Dragon decks, but has the same design mistake of being a singular card who does way too many things at once.
• Heavenly Aegis – Aegis is a fairly controversial card in SV. A lot of people who play the game casually think the card is broken, while the card is considered to be quite fair by the more serious players. And in recent times, it has been shown to be quite weak in the Constructed meta. However I will still be glad to see this card go, because it is such a bland and uninspired design. There is nothing particularly interesting about a giant indestructible 9 drop. Aegis is clearly meant to be a near unstoppable win condition for slow Haven decks, but there are much more creative ways to do this. So if Cygames wants to print another game ending card for Haven, all I ask is for it to require some amount of deckbuilding like Seraph.
• Zeus – Considering that he costs 10 play points, Zeus is a pretty fair card when played on Turn 10 or later. The issue is that throughout the SV metas he has mostly seen play from decks that can cheat him out earlier than that. From Dragon turbo-ramping into Zeus and Neutral decks playing him early using Sahaquiel, to the current meta where Ginger plays him for free with other high cost followers on Turn 9 and Shadow buries him early and then reanimates him repeatedly starting from Turn 5. Minion cheat is a dangerous mechanic so it is nice to see it have one less support card.
• Dragoon Scyther – Another disgusting Dragon card from this set, although she is not as blatantly pushed as Sibyl. With all the ramp that Dragon has had access to in every set starting from TotG, getting into Overflow is trivial… so Scyther is pretty much a 3pp kill anything. Getting Storm so that the card gives extra reach against slower matchups is just excessive.
• Mage of Nightfall – TotG was the set where Cygames first started to push for a more aggressive variant of Earth Rite Rune, with cards like Magic Illusionist, Halo Golem, Mutagenic Bolt, and the aforementioned Mage. Nightfall is not particularly overpowered, and is probably the weakest card among the 4 listed. But she is a dumb Ambush card that encourages non-interactive games. Mage of Nightfall is the only Ambush card that Rune has, and I hope it stays that way.
• Impartial Strix – Fuck Neutralcraft, honestly. The big Neutral push would not officially happen until the next expansion, but some of the support cards were already here. Strix is a card that encourages you to fill up most of your deck with Neutrals, and the reward is.. a grossly overstatted 4 drop. It encourages decks to brainlessly curve out with Neutrals into a blowout Turn 4. And then if Strix gets played too late in the game, then he does not get the +2/+2 stat bonus. So he is really just a dumb highroll card.