Hello everyone! Today I want to show you my favourite deck. When I started getting into card games I thought myself as a control player. Drawing cards and casting powerful spells was right up my alley. Now a couple of years later, I realised that whilst I do enjoy playing control decks, my real vocation lies in aggressive decks. No matter what I brew I always end up playing a couple of games with an aggressive list every day. So let me show you my current favourite:
Stonescar Aggro
In this deck tech, I want to talk about the general idea I followed when building the deck, the different card choices, prominent cards I didn’t include, how the deck evolved over time and some general guidelines for playing it.
The idea & the first list
When I first built this deck 3 season ago, I obviously wasn’t reinventing the wheel. Stonescar Aggro is almost as old as Eternal itself. However, the meta I built it in was consisting mostly of control decks or aggressive aegis midrange, which both are looking to blank the opponent's interaction. This state of the metagame strongly influenced my deck building decisions. I looked at all the Stonescar cards and only included ones that were never dead in your hand in any matchup. This is the reason you don’t find cards like Annihilate or the Madness, Combust package in the main deck. In addition, I was also looking for cards that were either 1 or 2 drops or have immediate value, such as Charge, being a weapon or exhausting a blocker. I also wanted to play additional power to make sure I could curve into the powerful Stonescar 4 drops on time and wanted to lean heavily on the Fire side to be extra consistent. Following these ideas, I ended up with this list:
Pokpokless Stonescar
The Fall of Argenport changes
I was really happy with the result. The list performed really well for me and I managed to set a new personal record, climbing from Gold III to Masters in 4.5 hours. With the reveal of the Market mechanic, I was immediately excited because of the implications for this list. As I said earlier, I wanted my 3+ drops to have immediate impact on the game but didn’t manage to completely follow through with that idea, since Stonescar was lacking good 3 drops. Ixtun Merchant was about to change that. I was furthermore really keen on testing Territorial Elf, who turned out to be another powerhouse already gifting me a lot of wins. So with the addition of the new cards, I ended up with the list I shown at the beginning of this article. This is also the list I used to get into masters this chapter and feels really well positioned.
Card choices
Grenadin Drone: We have seen four sets of cards so far and Grenadin Drone is still the best one drop in the game. It’s an all-star in aggressive mirrors and provides additional bodies for Bandit Queen, it’s also a bad removal target.
Oni Ronin: This is a very strong contender for the best one drop, but gets a small bump due to the vulnerability against Vara’s Favor. It’s still a must-have for every aggressive Fire deck out there and puts a lot of early pressure on the opponent.
Pyroknight: Pyroknight is quite a bit weaker than the other two one-drops, but a 2/1 with Overwhelm plays nicely with Rapid Shot and the late game power sink can prove to be invaluable. This is mostly in the deck to make sure we have a turn 1 play.
Torch: A truly meta-defining card and easily one of the best cards in the game. Such an automatic include.
Rakano Outlaw: While not threatening tons of damage it is really difficult to block early whilst adding even more Warcry units to the deck, which can snowball out of control very quickly. It also wears Shogun’s Scepter quite nicely and is overall just really solid.
Rapid Shot: One of the reasons to be in Shadow for aggressive decks. This is one of the most powerful combat tricks in the game and a great way to gain tempo against decks that rely on playing a single bigger unit every turn (Can you imagine that it only cost a single power for a long time!). In matchups that don’t rely on units, this still doubles up as a two-cost burn spell.
Ripknife Assassin: Everything I said about Rakano Outlaw applies to Ripknife too, with the small difference being that this is rather easy to block early but your opponent won’t be happy to block it with one of their bigger units later in the game.
Territorial Elf: One of the new additions to the deck that has already proven its worth in the games I have played. Territorial Elf threatens six damage on turn three and a lot more if you have Shogun’s Scepter or Rapid Shot. It is often worth waiting to attack with this until the coast is clear or you can combo it with one of the cards giving Quickdraw.
Cinder Yeti: The little Yeti is one of my favourite cards in the game, due to how much heavy lifting it does in the various Fire aggro decks. It might look rather unimportant, but exhausting an enemy blocker is often worth a lot of damage and you get a 3/2 body with Overwhelm too.
Ixtun Merchant: The market is probably the most exciting new mechanic in the Fall of Argenport and Ixtun Merchant certainly is the most exciting new card in Stonescar Aggro. I will talk a bit more about the specific market choices in the coming section. With the merchant, we can now swap excess power for useful tools befitting the current situation, which makes me even more certain that running 27 power is the correct choice. It also changes the mainboard composition a bit, since we now run one of each of the powerful top end cards in the market, decreasing the curve slightly and thus making the deck more consistent again.
Shogun’s Scepter: You can imagine this card as two Oni Ronins of which one has Charge. It adds more snowball potential to the deck as it is another Warcry card but also doubles as a great target for receiving warcries. Furthermore, Shogun’s Scepter perfectly follows the rule of immediate impact, as it deals immediate damage and leaves another body behind.
Bandit Queen: I think everyone that has played Eternal for a bit knows this card, either from playing with it or sitting on the receiving end. Being the true reason to play Stonescar aggro, you are never unhappy to see this card appearing in your hand. If you manage to play a unit every turn and follow it up with Bandit Queen on turn four chances are high that you win on the spot.
Vicious Highwayman: Often being Bandit Queen number 5 to 8, Vicious Highwayman is another good reason to be in Stonescar. As a unit with Charge, it is an excellent target for Warcries and the Lifesteal ability allows for turning aggressive mirror matches around. Hitting the influence requirements to play him might turn out a bit difficult sometimes. However, I still think that the sheer power level of this card is worth the risk.
The powerbase: As I mentioned earlier, this deck is trying to lean heavily on the Fire side of Stonescar to be extra consistent. This shows in the powerbase as I run 22 fire sources and only 17 Shadow sources. Furthermore, I run two Cabal Standards as a measurement against flooding out and the additional combat trick has already proven to be useful.
The Market
Combust: This is the cheapest option to permanently remove a blocker but doesn’t make the cut in the mainboard due to the sacrifice part. However, this is a valuable silver bullet to fetch.
Mindfire: Mindfire has been the card I got the most out of the market so far. I think that is due to the popularity of big midrange decks, but I’m convinced that it’s a great market card and will see a lot of play there. Removing two blockers from combat often proves to be lethal, if not on the first swing then often the turn after you played Mindfire.
Factory Quota: The perfect silver bullet against slow control decks. It often deals the majority of the damage against players looking to draw more cards than doing anything else. I think this is only a good card against decks that are slower than Feln Control, since Feln Control does have enough proactive units to beat you before the Quota gets them.
Bandit Queen: I think every market should include a proactive play and Bandit Queen is yours. She perfectly curves into the turn after you played Ixtun Merchant and will be one of the cards you are always looking to fetch.
Vicious Highwayman: You will probably only fetch this card against other aggressive decks, but there it’s easily your best card. Pushing damage and gaining life is extremely valuable in those matchups.
Cards I didn’t include
Champion of Chaos: For a long time this card was considered a staple in Stonescar aggro. Being a potential 5/3 with Overwhelm and Deadly puts a lot of pressure on the opponent if they don’t have an answer. This is the reason why I am not including this card. Over time the Eternal meta has changed. Every good deck has lots of possibilities to interact with units and the quality of three drops has surpassed Champion of Chaos. I included it in my pre-set 4 version of the deck, as Stonescar was lacking other good three drop options, but that changed. I have enough better three drops and can only run that many before my curve starts to be clunky.
Argenport Instigator: This was one of the best cards in the game for a long time. Being a 3/3 with mostly an upside pushed Stonescar to be one of the best decks. However, ever since the nerf to its influence requirements, aggressive Fire drops can’t reliably curve a fire one drop into Instigator anymore and it will usually sit in your hand being uncastable way too often.
Hideout Pistol: Undeniably being a powerful removal tool that adds a lot of tempo to your deck, this card has one problem making it not worth including. It requires a Gunslinger on board. Looking at the turns you ideally want to cast this card, you see that you only have a single Gunslinger to do so. To play this card reliably you would need at least twelve one or two cost Gunslingers.
Annihilate/ Suffocate: I don’t run any of those since having one sitting dead in hand vs a deck that blanks it often ends with a match loss, while you are still able to beat the decks the spells are good against without them consistently.
How to play the Deck
Some general words to begin with. You are looking to spend your power efficiently and always want to put additional pressure on the board each turn. Try to think what answers your opponent might have and how to make them as inefficient for them as possible.
Mulligan
In your opening hand, you’re looking for a one drop and a follow-up unit on turn 2 (doesn’t matter if it’s another one drop or a two drop) and undepleted power for your first 2 turns. This means you should mulligan hands that:
- Don’t have a one drop
- Don’t have a follow-up unit for turn two
- Don’t have undepleted power early
- Don’t have Fire and Shadow influence
Matchups
Big Time Midrange: Against big Time midrange (Time decks playing Sandstorm Titan and five drops) you want to get a lot of damage in early. If both players have a decent draw, it will probably come down to a boardstall with the opponent being on a small amount of health. Try to go wide and prepare for a final push with Bandit Queen or Mindfire, as this should be enough to finish the game. You can use your torch freely early in the game to push some more damage against mana dorks or cards like Amber Acolyte, since big Time midrange is missing good targets for it. Keep your Rapid Shots for the big units they are going to play.
Aggressive Justice Midrange: This includes Combrei Aggro, Argenport Midrange, TJP Midrange and all the slower decks playing Unseen Commando and the like. In these matchups, once again, you’re looking to apply some early pressure, pushing damage early isn’t as important as stacking Warcries to snowball out of control. Taking early trades to save your Torches and Rapid Shots for the big impact, Justice three drops is recommended unless an opposing threat would stonewall you from attacking. Bandit Queen is probably the best card to end the game here, so try getting one with a decent sized board.
Aggro Mirror: With the aggro mirror I mean all decks that are looking to end the game quickly and follow roughly the same plan you do. This is the matchup where I see the most misplays from my opponents. It is really important to hold onto your fast spells, especially Torch here. You should trade your one drops for their ones and two drops and keep the tricks for cards like Highwayman, Champion of Chaos, Champion of Fury, Unseen Commando and whatever game-changing Torch target your opponent runs. Of course, sometimes one side gets an early hold of the match and runs away with it, but thinking about the key cards you and your opponent run should show you when to trade and when to spend removal.
Spell based control: The best advice I can give here is to take it slowly. Control decks don’t put a lot of pressure on you and you can afford to play around their sweepers to not fall behind. As a rule of thumb, I usually advise committing two relevant threats to the board. Once the opponent invalidates one, either via removing it or playing something that blocks it, you can commit another threat. This strategy won’t win you every match, but it should win you the majority of the matches against control.
Praxis Tokens: I wanted to include this specific matchup as it solely depends on your ability to snowball early. It’s imperative that you get a Warcry chain going early, since you will otherwise end up with lots of x/1s against a never-ending flood of 1/1s. Playing Warcry units and finishing the opponent off with a Bandit Queen turn is pretty much the only path to victory here.
Final words
Finally, at the end of the road, I hope you have enjoyed reading my reasoning behind this specific build of Stonescar Aggro. Always remember that playing card games is a numbers game. You won’t win every match and you should always play to your outs, not towards not losing. This deck is built to be consistent and surrenders a bit of the potential to get unbeatable draws in favour of winning the more average matches. I also think that this deck requires experience, as most aggro decks do. Doing fine with an aggro deck might not be difficult, but as soon as you’re looking to get the final percentage points out of the deck, you will realise that there might have been a lot more decision making than just A-spacing. As always, if you have any further questions, you can always contact me on the Eternal Discord and maybe we will meet on ladder fighting one of the most intense aggro mirror games.
