Unryuu

So the theory behind my Phantom Drake deck is not entirely simple - it's a board-oriented, tempo deck that follows in the fashion of the old Eachtar lists. After some more matches, I've found that the list is surprisingly viable outside of the hyper-competitive Keeper/Sword meta. I would definitely use this one for Shadow dailies from now on ~ The priority is always to have material on board, which allows you to make massively versatile plays based on a number of utility cards in the deck (what I personally call 'operators') ... in this you are assisted by how sticky Last Words, and multiple-body token followers are from Shadow. Eachtar used to be the powerhouse in Mid Shadow, but it had several drawbacks even before the nerfs - he was hard locked at Turn 7 - when a lot of answers come online, like Calamitous/Themis - and telegraphed, which you could play around with wards or removal. Eachtar also dealt a burst dependent on how much of a wide board you had, which is terrible in today's removal meta. Similarly, I don't like Atomy-Tyrant as a concept because it's incomplete - the deck is actually very weak in terms of proactive board control, and entirely rely on forcing your opponent to take passive trades because you boarded the Atomy burst on Turn 3. If the Lord Atomy comes late or you lose board first, you can't recover very well. So the idea behind this PDrake deck is that for only 4 PP - which is very early in the match - you convert a stable, but low-threat board into a tempo face machine. It's the same concept as Eachtar, which temporarily boosted attack to deal face, except you can play a much more fluid game with this concept - the board is dedicated to control, whilst you only need to take one trade or mill in order to retain the threat of 6 attack every turn. This is also where the operators come in - with x 2 Highway to Hell, x 3 Troth, you can make tempo plays to delete a sufficient portion of your opponent's board for your PDrake to be a faster threat than their board. That's important, because that is what decides whether your opponent has to force trades rather than rushing face. Obviously PDrake is only Plan A, since for a fair proportion of matches a control deck will find an answer to it at some point. But at that point you've already stalled 7 turns or so without too much threat to your face, so you can just Tyrant to face through all their wards with Deadmoon. The draw is also an important part of the deck, since it fuels hand and your ability to vomit material onto board at a rate that would make Eachtar envious ... as well as hides your PDrake. So @zzMedVeDzz is partially correct - I think Tyrant lists had that weakness before SFL with low stats for trades, and the inability to threaten face. But as you said, Troth + Highway makes this deck run a lot more smoothly.

TFW your Phantom Dragon deck is faster than Albert at full sprint ... and out-bursts an Aggro Ephemera Dragon by days ...

Off topic, that new profile pic ~ I approve. The animation is too cyclical to stare at for more than 10s, but I'll tolerate it because Unicorn Destroy is fairly good mecha design ... at least compared to the rest of the franchise, and the parts of that we do not speak of.

I'll show you some nice replays to compensate, then .

So, I've finally made a list that I'm satisfied with sufficiently to publish. Make no mistake, this is a highroll deck that relies on the correct pulls in the correct balance in terms of fodder:spell ratios. However, it is supremely fun in that as a control killer, you are nigh unstoppable. @zzMedVeDzz @Chappie @AAA @Morrigan @Alexx55 if you're interested, here's the list that I've had some decent fun with. Don't take it on ladder and expect to climb, but it should do just fine vs. any deck that's mid or control, and not super aggro. I have some pretty decent replays to show off as well, beat a couple of Roach/Keeper/Atomy decks. Phantom Dragon Shadow

One example would be a copy of Aldos in your typical Keeper deck, with plenty of strikes. You'd play your Keeper match, overdraw on cards from Staircases, and then the moment your opponent tries to ward or fill board in order to contest the Keepers - or if your opponent is playing a Keeper mirror, and triples down on the Keepers to contest - you smash in their face + board for 7 7 7 7 7 with Imperial Dragoon.

To clarify, an honest win condition is one that can take you to victory without your opponent making specific mistakes or plays or decisions. A dishonest one is one that relies on the opposite to have value or win. Khawy is an example, he doesn't heal if your opponent doesn't have a neat Bahamut on the board. White Paladin or Aurelia are the same, they don't have effects unless your opponent swarm. Tyrant is probably a third, since you bait your opponent into trades, if you don't run the Tombs/Atomy variant. Elf Queen is a dishonest win condition, because you have to bluff your opponent into thinking you have Roaches so they trade out your Fairy boards repeatedly.

I think we're in agreement that Dragon needed a good Legendary + new archetype ... just whether Keeper was that specific Legendary. I'm not saying Keeper doesn't belong in Dragon, just that Shadow would have made good use of that card as well. Dragon deserves a couple of good cards, although I'm sure there could be many other concepts that could have equally made up for the treatment it got during WD ... like maybe a couple of decent supports for Discard that makes it a lot more viable, perhaps? Also Shadow's 'archetypes' are composed of mostly the same few cards in all the above decks - usually just 50% overlap with staples like Corpse, Attendant, Eater, ZParty, Khawy. Keeper would have made other cards off that curve playable, perhaps. Tyrant/Atomy is a bit of an anomaly currently, but for meta-viable consistent decks we only have Neph and Mid, and Mid isn't really doing very well. Again, it's not a case for 'Shadow needs this more than Dragon', just that 'Shadow would have made good use of Keeper too'. Dragon can take what it deserves. I only made that Mail comment out of amusement because it's an 0/7 brick of stats that does nothing unless you ramp into it ...

Unryuu lives up to his name of Cloud Drake with this Phantom Dragon deck ~

So I thought to start a little thread for people to share their custom decks that are in their opinion super dishonest, for a bit of fun. They have to be decks you play, not ones you've seen played. My definition of an honest deck is anything that plays properly ... whether it's stats on board, or even storm, or burn. Combos are honest, you can see the Roach or Tyrant coming from half a mile away. The decks I'm talking about the ones that often appear utterly useless ... until your opponent falls into your strategy trap, and dies to a bunch of almost counterlogic cards. For example, my Neph Shadow deck probably qualifies as super dishonest - you don't play any followers with more than 1 or 2 attack from Turns 1 to 8, but your hand is full of removal like Pact or ZParty, and all of your followers are Last Words: kill a random enemy follower (Corpse) or are named Little Soulsquasher (nom nom bye evolved Soul Dealer). It's utterly incapable of winning a match until Morde, but then it doesn't matter because all the under-statted crap you throw out somehow kills their board, and trades via Troth's Curse for their 5/5 Strix drops. Another example is my Control Forest deck, where the actual match plan vs. aggro is just to throw Fairies at their board until both sides run out of steam, and then ROFL hard with an Elf Queen drop to reset the match. Or Control Sword, where Round Table is configured to pull Mars + White Paladin. It's not an optimal combo on an empty board, since you don't have double Juliet or Romeo utility ... but then if your opponent has 3 followers on the field, with an evolve you just randomly board a 2/3 Mars, a 5/3 Paladin, and 3 2/2 Shield Guardian wards with the Mars effect that takes them forever to clean ... Otohime with wards ... ow. They're all super dishonest because they just take advantage of the other player's deck rather than an honest combo .... Some standalone dishonest cards are Tsubaki, Swordsman, Khawy ... etc. Anything that nets you extra value based on a play the opponent made that makes them realize they screwed up afterward. You should feel good playing a dishonest deck, because you may have won, and terrible as a human being because you did this to someone. I sometimes bait with no wards for the Genesis evo, for example, and the drop a Khawy on board afterward to make the opponent die a little inside.

RIP my super shifty Neph Shadow deck that gets away with 100% fluidity because I can run all sorts of 2 PP and 3 PP throwaway cards, and then mill them with Conversion or use them for super kill effects like SoulsQ or Corpse. The whole theme of the deck is that you are a dishonest removal-based moving target that has no threat on board to speak of, but wrecks your board all the same - much like Prime Keeper - and then screws your day over with Nephy later. I still run it on Masters Ladder, and anyone who doesn't run B&B or Hero has trouble for days.

Prime Keeper should have been the new Shadow Legendary. It makes Shadow finally have a use for all those understatted followers that look like decent value on paper, but have no use on the board and are a waste of a slot. There'd be a win condition for Mid Shadow, finally. Also there's no real storm in Shadow that doesn't require your entire board to be free, and there's no ramp. Perfectly balanced, and it would push class mechanics for Shadow for once. Dragon can have Mail of Obliteration ~

Take the likes and keep quiet, you two.

Just read what @FrankTrollman wrote up there. Probably expressed everything I wanted to convey in this thread better than I could.