I have newfound empathy for DShift players. That’s the strangest thing about this, really. A week ago, I was struggling to understand how anyone could play a deck like that—where strategy, calculation and instinct, the soul of any card game, all take a back seat to the way a computer deigns to sort an array. You become an automaton, playing whatever cards you receive in a joyless preprogrammed order. Why would anyone subject themselves to that?

It wins.

The decklist

It has been two years. Swordcraft has exactly one playable card that draws cards from your deck, and it was printed last week. You do not need me to explain what’s happening here.

Welcome back to Unlimited, home of the deck that runs three Zeus, plays one, and summons it five times. Nothing here makes any goddamn sense. We’re going to burn it all down.

Put in all the draw. Fuck it. Just slam it in there.

The gameplan

Redraw Mystic Ring, Altered Fate, Trail Of Light, Spartacus and Shining Bellringer Angel. If this leaves you with no 2PP cards, redraw everything and do better next time.

Use Altered Fate to throw away your deck. If you don’t have an Altered Fate in your hand, play other cards until an Altered Fate is in your hand. If you have two Altered Fates in your hand, you have too many Altered Fates in your hand. Use Mystic Ring on an Altered Fate in your hand so you will not have too many Altered Fates in your hand.

If your opponent is going to hit you in the face with a baseball bat, stop them from doing that. If you cannot stop them from doing that, start discarding cards very quickly.

Do not discard all 3 Spartacus. Do not draw your last card before playing Spartacus. Doing either of these things will cause you to lose and not win.

Draw all of the correct cards in the correct order. Win on turn 7. Repeat.

Matchups

Forestcraft

go first

Dragoncraft

go first

Swordcraft

go first

Runecraft

go first

Shadowcraft

go first

Bloodcraft

go first

Havencraft

go first

Portalcraft

go first

Results

During the 3 hours I could stomach playing this deck, it climbed at Master rank with a roughly 70% win rate. Then I waited like a month to publish this article—the deck is almost guaranteed to be completely unplayable now. I don’t know why I wrote this.

Sky Brigade waiting room