Hey everyone, Reygon here and I am happy to be the the first to post a Deck Primer around the new Contender Shadowblade! Shout out to MrFrick for letting me test out this new feature for Deck Planet.
Link to Deck List: https://www.deckplanet.net/alpha_clash/deck/44906885-7f2a-4c13-a8c8-7e281e646fb7
This Shadowblade list is a low cost, efficient, interactive, and aggro based deck looking to do damage as quickly as possible with efficiently costed clash card and enhancers.
Contender: Shadowblade, Agent of the Shadows
Playstyle:
The main goal of this deck is get in damage quickly with low costed clash cards and fuel your hand by taking advantage of bounty counters and card draw. Shadowblade gives you access to repetitive card draw and bounty counter placement from her 25 ability. Then cards such as Target List and Linn Cybernetic Stalker to add additional card draw to continue the pressure each turn. The Clashground Denver is as an important card as it increases the attack of both Alpha Hunters and Rogues by 1 as well as filtering your hand.
Card Advantage Engines
Shadowblade, Agent of Shadows: 25 ability lets you draw each time a card with a bounty leaves play. This counts as from both defeats and send to oblivion effects.
Target List: whenever a card with a bounty counter is defeated you may draw a card. This only works for defeats and not send to oblivion.
LINN, the Nanite Assassin: you can recur cards from any oblivion if a card with a bounty counter is defeated. This can target either valuable cards from your opponent or bring back your own threats!
Trigger enter draw one clash cards: Both Linn, Cybernetic Stalker and Shadowblade (bound card) allow you to draw a card when entering. Note for Linn there must be a bounty counter to get the free draw.
Bounty Counter Engines
LINN, the Nanite Assassin and Target List: trigger enter place a bounty counter on a Clash card you don't control. These are the easiest and most straight forward ways but it is a one time use only. If you have 2 Linn's you can start to loop them back into play to ensure there is always a bounty counter available.
Contender 25 Ability: Each time you ambush with a Mecha Drailia card, you can put a bounty counter on a clash card you don't control. We include cards like Shadowblade, Cyber Hunter / Shadowblade, Lying in Wait / Shadowblade, Bad Company to ensure we can utilize this ability. You need to attack and land damage with your contendere to trigger cyber hunter and bad company. Opposing contenders with 1 defense can make this more difficult to trigger and will require the use of a clash buff.
Clash Buff: Precise Strike allows you place a county counter as long as you trigger challenge (deal damage to an opposing contender).
As you can see, you can be dependent on your contender dealing damage to continue to place bounty counters. Opposing players will start to learn to play around this. On top of that, it is risky to attack with you contender until the coast is clear from available defenders.
Playstyle:
In general, what I am trying to do is get my low costed linns and shadowblades into play and attack on repeat while being buffed by Denver. Most opening hands i want to see at least one of my 6 dual color resource cards. The only black cards we play require only one pip but we want to work towards 4 blue pips on turn 4 to take advantage of Shadowblade, Bad Company.
Turn 1 I am looking to either get Denver into play or Nanite Assassin / Target List if they have a clash card I can target for my bounty counters. Turn 2 will depend on what your turn 1 looked like. If we were able to get a bounty on an opposing clash card, then we are looking to either use a bombardment to defeat it to potentially draw 2 cards with contender and target list / Nanite Assassin or use a Cybernetic Stalker to get a trigger enter and get some attacks going. If not, you are looking to place a new bounty counter a clash card they control or advance your board state with your weapon Stealth Suit.
Into the midgame, we are just looking to efficiently remove opposing threats/obstructers with Bombardment, Execute, or direct attacks with clash cards. If you do this in conjunction with your bounty counters and card advantage engines, you can easily start drawing multiple cards per turn. Once we hit turn 4, our ideal play is to trigger an ambush with Shadowblade, Bad Company by attacking and dealing damage with your contender. If you have a good draw and play the early game right this can result in a huge burst of damage.
Setup:
Have Denver in play
Have Stealth suit in play
Attack with contender and deal damage to their contender.
Trigger Ambush with Shadowblade, Bad Company
Shadowblade, Bad Company enters play and you can attach the Stealth Suit for free and you can place a county counter a card you don't control.
Shadowblade, Bad Company's ambush allows you to put a 3 cost Shadowblade into play for free. We ideally would like to use the bound Shadowblade here to get the free trigger enter draw as well. So now we just played 9 resources worth of cards for discounted rate of 4.
Attack with Shadowblade, Bad Company boosted by Denver and Stealth suit attacking as a 7/4.
Move stealth suit for free to your bound Shadowblade now being boosted to attack for 5/4. Dealing 13 + damage on turn 4. This can be increased if they havent dealt with clash cards from previous turns.
Late game strategy will vary based on your opponent and game state but the longer the game goes the worse it might be for Shadowblade so anything you can do to end it quickly is in your benefit. Continue to play low costed cards, placing bounties and removing those cards with execute to keep the ball rolling!
Sideboard:
I have been trying out a build that flexes in Suit Up and Heavy Power armor to give the deck different threat angles to work from to keep your opponent guess. But feel free to modify to fit the expected Meta.
Weaknesses
Shadowblade is a strong deck if you like the aggro playstyle but it does have some downsides. If an opponent plays little to no clash cards early, they can minimize the impact of bounty counters simply by not giving you a chance to trigger them. Cards with higher defense also make a card like bombardment much less useful unless you have 2 in hand. If they can stop you from using your contender to attack by having a defense or two, or even use blockers wisely, they can stop your effective ambush plays and bounty counter creations. Also Shadowblade has no defense and a lower starting health pool, so if you fall behind in life, it can be hard to recover. The last and probably largest weakness is the low defense of every clash card we play, Contenders such as Torque , Machina, or Pestilence can pray upon our small clash cards with repetitive removal and card draw. You just have to outpace their removal with damage which can get tricky.
Strengths
The playstyle is simple, consistent and effective. If you can outpace them, you can race to an early win while dismantling clash card based decks with effective removal and card draw engines.
There are many different ways and colors to build around this contender so feel free to experiment and find improvements!
Thanks for reading :)
Reygon