Hello everyone. I decided to try my hand at making a Morvran deck that doesn't revolve around reveal cards like Vattier de Rideaux, Alchemists, and Mangonels. Instead this deck mostly uses Morvran as a bit of deckthinning and a generally proactive setup to enable its Spotters. So here's what I've got:
Leader: Morvran
Golds:
Leo Bonhart
Eskel: Pathfinder
Triss: Telekinesis
Vesemir: Mentor
Silvers:
Cantarella
Assire var Anahid
Roach
Vaedermaker
Dimeritium Bomb
Artifact Compression
Bronzes:
3x Nilfgaardian Knight
3x Spotter
3x Fire Scorpion
3x Imperial Golem
1x First Light
2x Ointment
The premise of this deck is simple enough: Reveal 3 of your opponent's cards and 1 Nilf Knight or, failing that Assire, and failing even that, you could even reveal Cantarella. Then you play large 17 point Spotters on your revealed unit and after that you can play any unrevealed Nilf Knight you have to auto-reveal a Fire Scorpion for a 17 point knight drop. The ointments allow you to recur Spotters for more 17 point plays in later rounds or failing that 10 point Fire Scorpions. Normally playing a bunch of huge units early in R1 might feel like overplaying, but in this deck you are strongly expected to get those Spotters out early on in order to set up your Ointments in later rounds (btw you need to keep the revealed Nilf Knight for that). After playing Spotters you generally want to play any unrevealed Nilf Knights to auto-reveal a Fire Scorpion, turning the knights into 17 point plays as well. Essentially the bronze core exists to consistently deliver around a 17 point tempo, which frees up the rest of the deck nicely for control options. There is a bronze control option in the form of Nilf Knight revealing a Fire Scorpion and then playing the Fire Scorpion on your next turn, allowing you to deal 10 points of damage to a unit. First Light is typically used as a poor man's (albeit still effective) Reconnaissance but it is mostly run as a much-needed source of weather clear that shouldn't brick when you don't need that. You can also frustrate weather by playing Nilf Knights into them and letting the armor eat the damage, but that doesn't work well against Biting Frost unless someone is frosting a lone Spotter. If anyone is lost on how Assire is played, she is frequently used to shuffle a Roach back into deck, shuffle a Cantarella into your opponent's deck, remove cards your opponent needs from their graveyard, and the occasional de-bricking, like if you have both ointments in hand or graveyard and a Vesemir in hand, Assire can be used to shuffle an ointment back into your deck so that Vesemir can play it. She can even be used to put back First Light, Artifact Compression, etc. for future rounds if need be.
Against Greatswords this deck tends to do fairly well. Your main weapons are your high tempo plays, your ability to repeatedly blow up greatswords (knight+scorpions, vaedermaker, artifact compression, eskel, leo), and Assire var Anahid's ability to shuffle high value bronzes and silvers back into your opponent's deck, denying him a good resurrection. Generally you want to save Eskel for R3 so he can blow up a giant Greatsword or Djenge Fett when there's no more rez. Against Consume this deck's main weapons are Artifact Compression and Dimeritium Bomb, although you can also use Assire to shuffle dead Nekkers back into their deck allowing them to get amazing 4 point Nekkers instead of the giant monstrosities lurking at the bottom of their decks when they next consume their Nekkers. I have even had matchups against Consume where I would end with Dimeritium Bomb, followed by Assire shuffling Dimeritium Bomb and Roach back into deck, followed with Vesemir pulling the Dimeritium Bomb and Roach out. Needless to say, that's a win. Vesemir exists to give you consistency on your Dimeritium Bomb pull, but if Dimeritium Bomb would be bad your Vesemir will just be used to pull an Ointment into a Spotter for a respectable 23 points (+4 if grabbing Roach) which means Vesemir is basically a Geralt: Yrden when you need it and a Ciri: Nova +1 when you don't. Emhyr Handbuff plays out a lot like a mirror match since they will usually reveal their strengthened Nilf Knight, allowing you to piggyback off of it for your own Spotters. In fact you will even out-tempo them if they use Magne Division or Triss for a Wyvern Scale Shield while you play yet another Spotter or Vesemir/Triss into Spotter on their same Nilf Knight (if you haven't noticed, this deck replays its Spotters extremely consistently). Emhyr Handbuff also stands to lose tempo if they are stuck with Guardian/Wyvern Scale Shields/Nilf Knight/Alchemist while you are throwing down Spotters, Ointment->Spotter, or 17 point Nilf Knights. Overall, a good Dimeritium Bomb or maybe Artifact Compression will generally decide this match in your favor, but if you're lucky you could gain an edge otherwise. Note that Emhyr Handbuff is probably more threatening if they do the clever thing and avoid revealing their 18 point knight, as in that case their Wyvern Scale Shield alone will be worth more than your Spotter, and they can still use their Spotter to match your own, but I rarely see this happen, and even then Dimeritium Bomb will probably win it.
The worst match-ups for this deck appear to be Reveal and scorches. Not only do your Fire Scorpions lose value when revealed, but if they un-reveal your Nilf Knight and you can't re-reveal him with Leo or a lucky second knight, your Spotters are liable to face a severe loss of value. It's also unpleasant when they use Vicovaro Medics to use your own graveyard's Spotters against you, although you can still level them a bit with Dimeritium Bomb. As for Scorch, it might be possible use Morvran or Leo to reveal Assire var Anahid or Cantarella in addition to a Nilf Knight (if you used Morvran to reveal both a knight and a silver, you will have a 3 point Imperial Golem brick left in deck) so that you can vary up the power of your Spotters, but a lot of scorch decks will have ways to level them out. Mostly the answer appears to be to shamelessly bait scorches early on and if possible force a deep and heavy R2 so they either don't have scorches left for R3 or so that you can just get 1 Spotter out with a gold so that they will still lose tempo on their scorch.
It's worth noting that this deck has a lot of flex slots in its golds and silvers. Since the deck already has point-slamming covered, the flex slots can actually be used for utility and counters.
Anyway, feel free to give feedback and suggestions on the deck.
Leader: Morvran
Golds:
Leo Bonhart
Eskel: Pathfinder
Triss: Telekinesis
Vesemir: Mentor
Silvers:
Cantarella
Assire var Anahid
Roach
Vaedermaker
Dimeritium Bomb
Artifact Compression
Bronzes:
3x Nilfgaardian Knight
3x Spotter
3x Fire Scorpion
3x Imperial Golem
1x First Light
2x Ointment
The premise of this deck is simple enough: Reveal 3 of your opponent's cards and 1 Nilf Knight or, failing that Assire, and failing even that, you could even reveal Cantarella. Then you play large 17 point Spotters on your revealed unit and after that you can play any unrevealed Nilf Knight you have to auto-reveal a Fire Scorpion for a 17 point knight drop. The ointments allow you to recur Spotters for more 17 point plays in later rounds or failing that 10 point Fire Scorpions. Normally playing a bunch of huge units early in R1 might feel like overplaying, but in this deck you are strongly expected to get those Spotters out early on in order to set up your Ointments in later rounds (btw you need to keep the revealed Nilf Knight for that). After playing Spotters you generally want to play any unrevealed Nilf Knights to auto-reveal a Fire Scorpion, turning the knights into 17 point plays as well. Essentially the bronze core exists to consistently deliver around a 17 point tempo, which frees up the rest of the deck nicely for control options. There is a bronze control option in the form of Nilf Knight revealing a Fire Scorpion and then playing the Fire Scorpion on your next turn, allowing you to deal 10 points of damage to a unit. First Light is typically used as a poor man's (albeit still effective) Reconnaissance but it is mostly run as a much-needed source of weather clear that shouldn't brick when you don't need that. You can also frustrate weather by playing Nilf Knights into them and letting the armor eat the damage, but that doesn't work well against Biting Frost unless someone is frosting a lone Spotter. If anyone is lost on how Assire is played, she is frequently used to shuffle a Roach back into deck, shuffle a Cantarella into your opponent's deck, remove cards your opponent needs from their graveyard, and the occasional de-bricking, like if you have both ointments in hand or graveyard and a Vesemir in hand, Assire can be used to shuffle an ointment back into your deck so that Vesemir can play it. She can even be used to put back First Light, Artifact Compression, etc. for future rounds if need be.
Against Greatswords this deck tends to do fairly well. Your main weapons are your high tempo plays, your ability to repeatedly blow up greatswords (knight+scorpions, vaedermaker, artifact compression, eskel, leo), and Assire var Anahid's ability to shuffle high value bronzes and silvers back into your opponent's deck, denying him a good resurrection. Generally you want to save Eskel for R3 so he can blow up a giant Greatsword or Djenge Fett when there's no more rez. Against Consume this deck's main weapons are Artifact Compression and Dimeritium Bomb, although you can also use Assire to shuffle dead Nekkers back into their deck allowing them to get amazing 4 point Nekkers instead of the giant monstrosities lurking at the bottom of their decks when they next consume their Nekkers. I have even had matchups against Consume where I would end with Dimeritium Bomb, followed by Assire shuffling Dimeritium Bomb and Roach back into deck, followed with Vesemir pulling the Dimeritium Bomb and Roach out. Needless to say, that's a win. Vesemir exists to give you consistency on your Dimeritium Bomb pull, but if Dimeritium Bomb would be bad your Vesemir will just be used to pull an Ointment into a Spotter for a respectable 23 points (+4 if grabbing Roach) which means Vesemir is basically a Geralt: Yrden when you need it and a Ciri: Nova +1 when you don't. Emhyr Handbuff plays out a lot like a mirror match since they will usually reveal their strengthened Nilf Knight, allowing you to piggyback off of it for your own Spotters. In fact you will even out-tempo them if they use Magne Division or Triss for a Wyvern Scale Shield while you play yet another Spotter or Vesemir/Triss into Spotter on their same Nilf Knight (if you haven't noticed, this deck replays its Spotters extremely consistently). Emhyr Handbuff also stands to lose tempo if they are stuck with Guardian/Wyvern Scale Shields/Nilf Knight/Alchemist while you are throwing down Spotters, Ointment->Spotter, or 17 point Nilf Knights. Overall, a good Dimeritium Bomb or maybe Artifact Compression will generally decide this match in your favor, but if you're lucky you could gain an edge otherwise. Note that Emhyr Handbuff is probably more threatening if they do the clever thing and avoid revealing their 18 point knight, as in that case their Wyvern Scale Shield alone will be worth more than your Spotter, and they can still use their Spotter to match your own, but I rarely see this happen, and even then Dimeritium Bomb will probably win it.
The worst match-ups for this deck appear to be Reveal and scorches. Not only do your Fire Scorpions lose value when revealed, but if they un-reveal your Nilf Knight and you can't re-reveal him with Leo or a lucky second knight, your Spotters are liable to face a severe loss of value. It's also unpleasant when they use Vicovaro Medics to use your own graveyard's Spotters against you, although you can still level them a bit with Dimeritium Bomb. As for Scorch, it might be possible use Morvran or Leo to reveal Assire var Anahid or Cantarella in addition to a Nilf Knight (if you used Morvran to reveal both a knight and a silver, you will have a 3 point Imperial Golem brick left in deck) so that you can vary up the power of your Spotters, but a lot of scorch decks will have ways to level them out. Mostly the answer appears to be to shamelessly bait scorches early on and if possible force a deep and heavy R2 so they either don't have scorches left for R3 or so that you can just get 1 Spotter out with a gold so that they will still lose tempo on their scorch.
It's worth noting that this deck has a lot of flex slots in its golds and silvers. Since the deck already has point-slamming covered, the flex slots can actually be used for utility and counters.
Anyway, feel free to give feedback and suggestions on the deck.
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