[Order/Faith] Lawnmower

[kyleess]

Due to all the jolly green giants in the current meta, I've been trying to come up with deck that is specific enough beat draw happy scholar decks but that also remains competitive enough to play the other 75% of the time without being taken to the shed from over-specialization. It's not really competitive enough for the Competitive sub board, definitely not budget, and I don't know that it's particularly fun since the games can get long.

I don't know if anyone has built anything like this, but I rarely see the two sites used in this deck so I don't think it has a lot of adherents. I'm calling it Lawnmower.

Decklist:

Resource boosts:
3x Plentiful Crop
5x Forced Inheritance

Agents:
1x Benevolent Midwife
5x Mysterious Stranger

Sites:
5x Buried Cathedral
5x Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore

Actions:
4x Divine Intervention
3x Tactical Upheaval
4x Untimely End
4x Sudden Exhaustion
2x Family Heirloom
2x Ancestral Discovery
5x Preemptive Strike
2x Wrath Of The Righteous

The simple premise against a scholar deck is to get rich, push DI and Stranger early to minimize the damage they can inflict with what they are dealt, and get the sites out as fast as you can afford to. Buried Cathedral shortens the game. If you can get 2 out there, their sequence will be soon emptied and a Basilica will make short work of whatever threats they have left in their hand. That's important as scholar decks can get through their sequence damn quick. Then, when you are sure they are out of discards, drop AD and kill them with their own cards. Gotta be careful with that last bit since Basilica works on your cards too so if you draw green actions from the archive (and they are tempting) it will dump your most expensive remaining card as soon as you play it.

The other cards are pretty self explanatory and mostly hedges against rush. It works...okay. I'm batting about .700 with this deck but Borgia Tower rushes are tough since I can't usually get Preemptive Strike out soon enough to cancel them. And I've run into aggressive site decks that just embarrass me, although a fair percentage of the time they just run out of enough good cards too rapidly. I make a LOT of comebacks with this one. The downside is sitting for 9 turns while your opponent has nothing but a courtesan in his hand and you are waiting on very low power sites to turn up and break a stalemate. I guess I don't really value my time.

But it's enjoyable to face a scholar deck. I don't think many people play Basilica and some of the green peeps seem surprised to see their hand shrinking. I've had a number of people resign as soon as they lose that first big card and realize what's happening.

I've pretty well tweaked it as much as I can think to tweak. I might get rid of that last Benevolent Midwife since she's screwed me on the carousel when I had AD coming once or twice. Any advice or ideas?

[Tuism]

Very cool

I would chuck the benevolent midwife too.

Curiosity asks: do surprises count as actions? Like scientific espionage?

[kyleess]

Thanks, Tuism ;D

Yeah, Scientific Espionage is the exact one that I figured it out with. I put him out there poof went my Wrath. Surprise makes no difference.

[Tuism]

hunh! That's an interesting one, I thought it would distinguish between actions and surprises. I wanted to That is killer man!

I wanted to stick those Bascilicas into my own scholar site but I guess I can't now

[gamemaestro]

Surprise is just the speed of the action. It's still an action (think of the three filters for deck building/market).

[Ringel]

I'm pretty sure I met a version of this while playing black/green... ended in a sync error unfortunately. (I discarded a couple of cards before I realized what was going on... I think I had things stabilized though by the sync error)

[coolkendude]

kyleess

Yeah, I remember playing you earlier this week and although I know you played the Buried Cathedral, I was still surprised at one point that I had no cards left in my deck (and none in my hand either). I think it was the first time I had someone use Buried Cathedral on me effectively (I have a deck that uses it too but it's not yet fully developed so thanks for sharing this deck!).