Been a while since I have made one of these posts. I wanted to write about the decks that I am using in the Shadowverse Verdant Conflict meta. The VC meta is quite divisive, as many people hate it due to the faster pace and high amount of noninteractive cards. But honestly, I am a pretty selfish person. No matter how bad a meta is, if I can find at least one deck that I enjoy playing, then I will have fun playing it. This was the case with Wonderland Dreams which is widely considered to be the worst meta in SV history. But I still had a lot of fun playing during WD because it was the first time that Earth Rite Rune was viable, so I just played that deck. Similarly, there are a lot of things about the Verdant Conflict meta that annoy me but I have a few decks that I still enjoy playing so it is no problem.
Natura Midrange Forest
Easily my #1 favorite new deck from this expansion. This deck is amazing and has everything I want from a Midrange deck. Decent card draw, many different lines of play every turn, and opportunities of making some huge power plays. Best of all, it actually feels like a Forest deck which is something that Rotation has been lacking recently. The main class mechanic, playing multiple cards a turn, is how this deck makes those power spike turns in the mid to late game.
This deck went through a lot of changes and iterations since the beginning. One of the biggest challenges was in Airbound Barrage. It might seem weird to not see this card here, because Airbound is probably one of the most broken Forest cards ever printed. And I thought it should be 3x autoinclude in every deck. But between May Eager Elf and Avatar of Fruition, the deck has enough spot removal. There are also not that many great fanfares that are worth reusing in this deck.
Another big change was in May, Eager Elf. She was printed in the last expansion Rebirth of Glory and was widely considered to be a semi meme card. It seemed way too hard to consistently proc her Invocation effect when needed, and the other issue was in playing 4 cards a turn without board locking yourself. Well it turns out that Natura Forest is the perfect deck for her, because Respite and Fertile Aether provide virtual 0 cost cards that can be used to combo without actually taking up board space.
Earth Rite Rune
Rune is the worst class by far in the Rotation meta, and out of all the decks it has Earth Rite is probably the best performing one. Unfortunately I do not enjoy this deck nearly as much as Spellburn(the hybrid Spellboost/Earth Rite) from the last expansion, but I still have to play it since Rune is my main class. The reprint of Silent Laboratory from VC is extremely welcome, but this deck still has consistency issues in the early game. The new card Passionate Potioner is a solid 3 drop that can be used to copy key Earth Sigils, so it is now easier to set up those juicy 4 sigil Magisa plays.
Natura Control Blood
My other favorite new deck from Verdant Conflict, though it is definitely #2 compared to Natura Forest. Popularly called REN Blood by the Japanese community because of their names for the class mechanic(Revenge Evolve Natura), similar to REM Blood(Revenge Evolve Machina) from the previous expansion. Like the name implies, this is a Control deck that mixes cards from three different archetypes: Natura, Evolve, and Vengeance. I would say it is primarily a Vengeance/Evolve deck that adds in Natura cards for draw consistency. Many of the best Vengeance cards naturally have good evolve synergies(Yurius, Destructive Succubus) so it is easy to fit in cards like Zeus and Jafhnar/Hnikar. The Natura side of the deck provides extra draw since the trees are basically Neutral Insights, and Cradle of Dark Divinity provides a free evolve which feeds into the evo synergies of the deck.
The deck is a blast to play because it actually feels like a Blood deck, where you use your life as a resource. That was one of my main complaints about the previous expansion, because Machina Blood did not feel like a Blood deck at all. It actually felt more like a Shadow deck since its main win condition(Mono) and board clear(accel Technolord) scaled based on the number of dead Machina followers. Unfortunately this deck is pretty weak to decks that have a lot of incremental burn, like Earth Rite Rune and Thoth Natura Shadow. In other matchups though, Blood has the best Control tools in the format. The class has the best damage mitigation tool available in Azazel leader effect, and a multitude of healing effects including Cradle of Dark Divinity. While this is a Control deck, the main gameplan of the deck is to just survive and fight the opponent on board using busted Vengeance cards in the mid to late game. At some point, it transitions to a slow burn plan through the Destructive Succubus and the Turn10 effect of Lunatic Aether.
Artifact Portal with Maisha
Artifact Portal is a long time favorite of mine, and the archetype was struggling in the early meta for VC but has seen a resurgence recently with the mini expansion and a buff to a certain legendary. The key reason is Absolute Modesty, which is probably one of the most blatantly pushed cards that Cygames has ever made. The card functions as a 1pp removal when accelerated, which scales based on the number of artifacts in your deck. It gives you a leader effect on evolve which helps clear the board, and deal face damage instead if the enemy board is already clear. And then it even has an enhance effect which gives it free evo and cost reduces all artifacts in hand by 1. Just a card that is good at every stage of the game. The evolve effect of Absolute Modesty encourages the deck to run many different types of Artifacts, but it is hard to say whether it is worth building around that or not. In this variant of the deck, we ignore the evo effect and run a pretty typical Artifact deck with Modesty as an added bonus.
The strength of Artifact Portal is that it is the king of board control, and so the gameplan of this deck is to keep the opponent board clear by creating artifacts, and then giving them Rush with Acceleratium for efficient board plays every turn. The deck then has two main win conditions. One is to save an evolve for Maisha and then use the Purgation Blade on herself, which will deal 20 damage or more as long as you have enough friendly followers destroyed in the game. This normally requires you to wait until Turn 10, but it is possible to get Maisha lethals earlier helped by the pp refund from playing 1pp artifacts(Analyzings and Ancients) with an active Acceleratium and Augmentation Bestowal. The enhance effect of Absolute Modesty also helps with this gameplan, since it cost reduces all artifacts in hand by 1. The other win condition is to create a huge board early with the help of a recently buffed card: Shion, Mercurial Aegis. Her cost was lowered from 9 to 8, and her accelerate was buffed from 5pp to 3pp, so in some matchups Artifact can try to win by creating an unanswerable board. Since Shion now costs 8, she is also not a dead card late in the game as her protection effect is very relevant against many decks in the meta.
Artifact Portal with Ines
A different build of Artifact Portal. Maisha lethal setups do not happen that often anymore in this fast meta, so this build plays more into the Absolute Modesty leader effect. We generate at the very minimum 4 different artifacts between Analyzing, Ancient, Guardform, and Strikeform. We can still try to win by creating unanswerable boards with early Artifacts combined with Shion accelerate. And now instead of Maisha we have Ines, who is hard for many decks to interact with and can run away with the game. Half of the cards in our deck cycle, so toggling Resonance on and off for her AOE burn effect is trivial.
As you can see, I am a huge fan of running the 12 Machina package(Mechagun Wielder, Hoverboard Mercenary, Displacer Bot, Magna Giant). At the very minimum 9 machinas are required, since Displacer Bot is probably the most important card in the entire deck. Hoverboard is not 100% necessary, but I like running her because it increases the chances that a Magna Giant played for full cost later in the game will actually do enough damage clear the board.
Lovers Arcana Yamada Lvl99 