[Faith/Scholar] Gardener of Rhodes

[felixschroeter]

Hi all,
with the recent patch some of you might be busy building decks with the (now debugged) Imperial Gardener / Cyril of Rhodes combo. Here is my take on the matter (it's quite preliminary and your comments are very much appreciated!):

Total (50)
Core
5 Imperial Gardener
5 Cyril of Rhodes
5 Underground Refuge
5 Buried Cathedrale

Draw / Deck Thinning / Tutoring
4 Sophia's Office (I only have 4, added 1 Leap of Faith instead)
5 Ancient Map
5 For the People
5 Den Defense
5 Field Study

5 Holy Day
1 Leap of Faith

I also tried Faith/Media to use Magnetic Personality on Cyril but I constantly lacked draw power, so I turned to Scholar. As it is the deck is already fun to play but it certainly lacks competitiveness. Happy to hear your thoughts!

(Apologizes if I might have missed a similar deck post somewhere on the forum. I searched for it but found none...)

[rl]

the media version of this deck needs bearer of mix tidings for draw, with dama rosa for early income that gives you 15 agents minimum in the deck unless you include others which is good enough for draw.. i think the media version is much more competitive as i have already experimented with this type of deck when the expansion came out. You need magP to get cyril scoring before the enemy has a solution for him, or blocks him with little agents. This deck does look good, Love sofia's office with field study

[felixschroeter]

Lol, I just noticed that the market price of Imperial Gardener has indeed doubled since the patch. I should have bought a couple of em yesterday! xD

[kyleess]

I'm working on a version of this. But the NOOS is outrageous when I play this deck! Is it the faith? Is it the gardener himself? Are you noticing this?

[Tuism]

It's the version. If you play against someone who hasn't updated, you'll get an out of sync error when anyone plays a card that's "different" - I guess when stuff get updates all kinds of subtle changes are in many things.

[kyleess]

Well, lame. What can they do about that? They can't exactly force Apple to do a version check before the game starts.

[Barchie]

Do you consider to insert 2 or 3 losing faith? Or you consider it superfluous, given your build?


Barchisa

[felixschroeter]

Hi Barchisa, Losing Faith could be an alternative for the sites that do the erasing/discarding. It might be a question of early game/end game advantage: Buried Cathedral discards/erases 4 cards every day (long term card advantage), Losing Faith lets you choose the card in question (huge advantage in early game). Maybe I'll try swapping some of the Underground Refuges for some Loosing Faith. Thanks for the tip!

[lurifaxb]

Does buried cathedral work with imperial Gardner now? I tried a version with this last patch but it didn't work - so disappointing. It is a great combo if it works.

Anyways I also tried a scholar variant by decided on media instead. RL is right. You need magnetic for its fierce damage. Feels so silly to have a 20/20 just get blocked by a 1/1 character. Loosing faith is a key card here as well.

I got a win very early with an incredible hand.

2 pp. played cyril and then losing faith. Bam. 6/6 damage instantly. Then used the card to give him deceptive and imperial gardner down. He was maybe 8/8 at this time. He gets blocked. Magnetic personality. 12/12 fierce, deceptive. GG.

Almost felt sorry

[lurifaxb]

Also the joy of getting rid of 5 suleimans (some from hand) is worth it in itself.

[felixschroeter]

Yeah, lurifaxb, you might be right preferring media. You get explosive starts for sure. I'm not so convinced about late game and in case of a bad starting hand, though... (okay, might be because I'm lacking PP's and can't build proper media decks. ).

[lurifaxb]

Unfortunately PPs are a must. I recently saved and scraped for my 5th PP. it is worth it.

I think that the early start in this type of deck is much better than the staying power.

You need Cyril to hit the deck fast. You need to discard his hard before he starts countering. If too long time passes your cyrils will most likely be dead. Then the deck isn't strong anymore.

[rl]

yep yep, the media variant obviously is not as good at drawing as scholar though its not that bad with BOMT. the only bad scenario in the media version is when you dont have a cyril at the start and you're waiting it out to find a cyril thats usually when you lose haha.

[felixschroeter]

rl: Yes, "the only bad scenario in the media version" was exactly what happened to me most of the time with the Faith/Media version. Therefore my Faith/Scholar approach. But admittedly I might have used the wrong Media memories...