The next Shadowverse expansion Altersphere has already been announced, and when that drops in a few days the next rotation cycle will happen. Starforged Legends will be leaving the Rotation format so I wanted to write about the cards that I am going to miss and the ones that I am glad to see go, very much like my previous post for Wonderland Dreams. I consider SFL to be a return to form after the powercreep trio of RoB, TotG, and WD. With a few exceptions, it felt like we were getting sensible card designs again after 3 expansions worth of super pushed cards. Even though the power level of this expansion was reasonable, the SFL meta was a real rollercoaster. The PDK Dragon/Aggro Sword meta of the 1st month is considered to be one of the worst states the game has ever been in. Not quite as bad as the Neutral Blood meta from month 1 WD, but pretty close. A lot of people hated the DShift meta from the second month as well. But the 3rd month of SFL is a fan favorite and is widely considered to be one of the best and most balanced metas in all of Shadowverse’s history.
The main theme of Starforged Legends was a fantasy astrological one, and the way this translated to game mechanics was.. lots and lots of card draw. I guess reaching for the stars is a loose metaphor for drawing cards? Classes got tons of extra cycle, like Concentration for Rune, Andrealphus in Shadow, and Dragon’s Foresight in Dragon. We got two neutrals with an Arcane Intellect effect(3 mana draw 2), and even a more efficient 1pp countdown amulet that specifically drew followers. Even Sword, the class that intentionally has lack of card draw as its weakness, got extra draw with Lux. It was also one of the classes that was able to make the best use of Staircase to Paradise. I remember playing Midrange Sword matches during this meta and being shocked that I would occasionally be forced to mill cards.
I think everyone really appreciated the extra consistency that this expansion brought to many decks. It was mostly old archetypes that were supported, but there were a few new ones. Deathly Tyrant and Lord Atomy were considered to be memes and insta-vial tier since Standard, and finally became part of a real deck due to Atomy’s interaction with Staircase.
Finally, I feel like the art department really stepped things up for this expansion, particularly for animated cards. Some of my all time favorites like Globe of the Starways and Star Torrent come from this set.
Cards that I am going to miss
- Aether of the White Wing – One of my all time favorite Shadowverse cards. Fantastic art and voicework, provides a very unique effect of pulling followers of specific mana costs depending on the turn, and encourages you to put specific followers in the 5-9 mana slot to make the most out of her effect. I am a huge fan of toolbox cards like this and she even plays into part of the Havencraft class identity of buffing health. During the SFL meta she spawned a new version of an existing archetype, Aether Storm Haven with no Garuda. I do not think anyone could have predicted this seeing as how Garuda was one of the main enablers for Storm Haven from the start. But protecting your board of freshly spawned birds and tigers with a 1/3 and a huge Cleric Lancer turned out to be a very strong power play. Unfortunately Aether has not seen much play recently in the Rotation meta although I still run her in Summit Haven to combo with Feather Rush in the late game. I will definitely miss this card a lot. On the flipside, she will live on in Rotation, but in a different class.
- Mars, Silent Flame General – Sword was one of the stronger classes during Wonderland Dreams, but many people I know who played it were not happy with the state of the class at the time. A common reason I heard was that the meta Sword decks did not actually play into its class identity. And the Neutral Alice decks that almost every class played were just better versions of what Sword had been doing for the past few metas. So Mars to me feels like a reaction to this complaint. Really she is just a balanced version of Alice. Cygames could have easily made Mars retarded by having her straight up grant a +1/+1 buff. But instead the health buff is applied first, while the attack buff only happens on clash. Mars is a card that actually fits into the Swordcraft class identity, something that a lot of its cards from the previous few expansions did not do. She had a really cool combo with White Paladin and Round Table Assembly, another card that was printed from this expansion. There are few things more satisfying than watching Aggro Sword insta-concede to you when pulling the Mars White Paladin combo on T5. I will forever be sad that the Set 3 prebuilt decks did not have alternate art legendaries, because we could have had her original Rage of Bahamut art as an alt Mars.
- Ceres of the Night – The anti-aggro card of the gods. Ceres was exactly what Shadow needed in the super fast 1st month meta of Starforged Legends. Having a 2 damage on a Clash effect meant that she was great at getting free trades against small followers from aggro decks, or at picking off damaged followers with 2 or less health during the midgame evo wars. Ceres was a meta dependent card, as she really just evolves to 3 attack due to 2 of the other attack points being relegated to Clash. So she only shines in hyper aggressive metas. Not only that, but she was also later overshadowed by Lady Grey, a super pushed card from Brigade of the Sky. Regardless, I will miss Ceres a lot as she provided a very useful effect during the aggro meta of SFL. Amazing voice in both English and Japanese too.
- Venus – If you went back in time to standard era Shadowverse and showed anyone this card, they would most likely say it is broken. Harvest Festival was a card that made PtP Forest way too consistent when the game came out, and eventually got nerfed by having its cost doubled from 2 to 4. So a fully statted 5 drop who gives you a 0 cost Harvest Festival just sounds so broken in theory. However standard SV was a very different game than SFL SV, and the pace of matches had gotten much faster. So even a value packed 5 drop was fair because it had no immediate effect on the board. I really like what Venus provided for Forest. She essentially let the class draw 2 cards every turn starting from the midgame by using one of their class mechanics(playing multiple cards in 1 turn). The fact that the Harvest Festival cost 0 also helped with activating combos and could sometimes be relevant in squeezing out damage during Roach turns.
- Andrealphus – A functional reprint of Skullcradle Widow. When it was first revealed I thought it was a total powercrept version of her, but Andrealphus evolving to only have 2 attack is actually a relevant drawback. This peacock provided extra consistency for Shadowcraft which is something that I really appreciated. When Soul Conversion, Demon Eater, and Andrealphus were all available in the same format it felt like this video was always playing in my head when using Shadow.
- Purehearted Singer – Most early game followers in SV would not see play in HS due to having much lower stats(minions in HS are designed around heroes having 30 life), but Singer is one of those rare exceptions. A Neutral Arcane Intellect on a 1/2 body? It should be auto include in every deck, and sounds so broken in theory. But Purehearted Singer ended up being a very strong, but balanced card in SV. Funnily enough Singer was not even played much during the SFL meta because of how fast that format was. Spending your Turn 3 playing a 1/2 was suicide against Aggro Sword especially going 2nd. Eventually the Rotation format was introduced and the game slowed down as a result, so Singer started seeing a lot more play. Really gonna miss her and the consistency that she brought to so many decks that have seen play throughout the year.
Cards that I am glad to see go
This was such a solid expansion that this list of cards is going to be way shorter than it was for my previous 3 writeups. If I were to include cards in their pre-nerf state I would definitely have the original Prime Dragon Keeper in here.
- Magic Owl – This inconspicuous little critter flew under the radar during the SFL spoilers and would turn out to be meta and archetype defining for Rune decks. I think most people knew the card was strong, but nobody predicted how much faster it would make Dimension Shift decks. The meta had also become so fast that having broken effects tied to evolutions seemed fair, since everything was about followers with good fanfares without evo. Anyways, the effect that Owl had on Spellboost based decks was unbelievable. Every Spellboost deck completely re-invented itself to make the most of Owl’s effect. Daria went from being a hybrid tempo/burn deck to a pure tempo deck based purely on cheating out followers on the board. Dimension Shift started running 3 copies of Commence Experiment, a card that had never seen competitive play since the beginning of the game. Chimera from Tempest of the Gods saw little to no play in the previous 2 metas, and all of a sudden became an insta 3 of in both Daria and DShift decks. Timeworn Mage Levi, one of the strongest Rune cards ever printed, got completely dropped from both Daria and DShift. Personally I do think it is pretty cool that Owl was able to make such a huge change in how people built competitive Spellboost decks, but I greatly dislike the ways the decks changed. DShift became way too fast, and almost everyone who played during Months 1 and 2 of SFL has probably experienced getting full Shift comboed on Turn 6 or 7. I feel like the deck became way more polarizing, as the difference between a highroll and lowroll was like night and day. I much preferred the older, more stable versions of DShift in older metas. I played a lot of DShift during DE and RoB, and it was quite consistent at assembling the combo by Turns 8-9. It also played for the board more. I also feel like old DShift had more decision making since the only super efficient spellboost card was Sorcery Cache, so depending on draw you sometimes had to make tough choices on which card to spellboost. With Owl, you just straight up Spellboost everything in your hand efficiently. So I will be glad to see this card go, just so that Spellboost decks don’t feel as highrolly.
- Round Table Assembly – Honestly, I like this card. It has a really cool effect and it thins out two low cost cards from the deck like Dark Airjammer, another card I really like. But it was one of the cards most responsible for propelling Face Sword to Tier 1 during SFL. And that deck is by far the most degenerate one in Shadowverse’s history. Sword became way too consistent at being able to do 10-11 damage out of hand from Turns 5 and 6 with a combination of evolving Albert, Alwida’s Command, and RTA pulling 2 Juliets. And it was not hard to do 10 damage before T5 from all of the 1 drops and cheap Storm cards available to Sword, especially going 1st. During the SFL meta I really wanted RTA to get changed to always pull 2 different commanders from the deck. It would not technically be a nerf, since it would have made the Mars/White Paladin combo more consistent in Midrange and Control decks. But it never got changed, and now Aggro Sword in Unlimited can forever have the potential to play Storm units every single turn.
Lovers Arcana Yamada Lvl99 