mDuo13

In the past year, I have gone deep down the Grand Archive TCG rabbit hole and I'm very excited to see what the top players have cooked up for the upcoming Ascent Boston tournament. Looking ahead to that, I've put together a tier list of decks and where I feel they fit into the current metagame. I don't do as much testing as the top players, but I spend a lot of time studying tournament results for my other site, Fractal of Insight, including spending time trying to figure out how to classify all the strange and exciting decks people cook up. I'm sure everyone has their own opinions, so if you're curious about mine, read on. I've made sure to link examples of what I feel are representative decklists for each one so you know which deck I'm talking about.

Tier 1: Villains

These decks are so strong, if you aren't sick of them yet, you will be soon. If you want to win, you're probaby playing one of these decks, unless you've cooked up something that beats them.

1. Serene Luxem
2. Suzaku
3. Ensoul
4. Merlin
5. Shadowstrike

I fully expect at least one new deck to ascend into the villain tier following Ascent Boston, but it's early enough that I don't know yet what it will be. The bigger story will be the world against Rile the Abyss: will every top-8 contender be on the new fire value engine, or will people figure out how to counter it? As of now, I feel it's too much and something will have to change, whether it's a banning or a new Proxia's Vault card, to balance the meta again. Weirdly, this top tier fields a bit like Ascent Ontario, where you had fire decks focused on efficiently leveling and using powerful advanced elements, versus a versatile aggro deck that tries to kill them before all that investment can pay off. But unlike Ontario, Shadowstrike Tristan (fresh off her World Championships win piloted by boeboe) is still hanging around too.

Tier 2: Heroes

These decks have a legitimate chance of toppling the villains, but they're not on top of the scene yet. Any of them are a good pick if you enjoy playing it and you're familiar with the play patterns, but they generally have some weakness that stops them from being in the top tier, like matchup or consistency issues.

1. Dragon
2. Oblation
3. Water Allies
4. Siphon Ciel or other non-Oblation Umbra Ciel decks
5. Lorrainger / Wind Allies
6. Exia
7. FiLo and other midrange-leaning aggro like Fire Diao
8. Suited
9. Genbu

Water Allies and Seiryuu are old staples that have better matchups into the types of decks that are prevalent right now; they got only small upgrades from the new cards in DTR, like dragons' Regal Inquisition (hey, isn't that a Bioware game?) or the Throne-Keeper Bullfrogs protecting Water Allies and Genbu. Umbra Ciel is an interesting case that feels like it has a lot of room to explore and find its final form; aside from the Baleful Oblation + Advent of the Stormcaller build, I've seen a variety of other lists that use his versatile toolbox after getting safely to level 3 off the back of Specters and the enormous health pool that Serene Spirit plus Guardian stats gives him. Meanwhile, "Lorrainger" is kind of a continuum that partially overlaps with wind allies, but the scary part of the new decks is their ability to go for a turn-2 kill by comboing Mad Hatter with Ranger Strides and Second Wind. The other surprise here is Exia Jin, who has... never been particularly good in the 6+ months he has existed in the game (lifetime 40% winrate). I'm not as high on Jin as Limelight is, but statistically the deck is one of the better performing ones and I have seen some strong players cooking up some stuff that seems promising, plus it has good matchups into several of the most common decks.

Tier 3: Mobs and Rogues

These decks are around and they can still be a serious threat in the right matchups or with some luck, but they're not so bad if you're prepared for them. Some of them are past villains that may rise again when the world forgets about them.

1. Norm Slimes
2. Diana Aggro
3. Fractals
4. Astra Ari
5. Water Diana
6. Umbra Diana

Welcome to the Diana tier, I suppose; a couple others including her bestie Arisanna are hanging out here too. Some of these decks are actually matchup nightmares for some opponents, but unfortunately not for the ones at the top of the meta right now. And it remains to be seen if the new DTR Diana cards can slot into a viable archetype; they feel weirdly pushed (seriously, Weaving Manastream is nuts) and yet she's still just too vulnerable to having her gameplan disrupted. Fractals seems like it shouldn't be this low just after it dominated the Swiss stage of the World Championships, but the top players have apparently moved away from it, presumably because it struggles to keep pace with the card advantage (and HP) that the level-3 Rile decks can accumulate. Still, the absolute terror that is Slimes being here should tell you not to take the decks in this tier too lightly.

Tier 4: Villagers

These decks are easily forgotten, and why not, when they're so often relegated to being the victim? They might be fun to play... as long as you don't mind losing to the top tier. Not that they can't win: on rare occasions, a hero rises from their midst. Sometimes decks that would otherwise be OK are stuck in this tier because they're incidentally countered with tech that was intended for the higher tiers.

1. Wind Crux with or without Ensoul
2. Astra Diana
3. Arcane
4. Neos
5. Razorgale
6. Pretty much everything else.

Aside: there's a player semi-local to my area who always used to try out any deck that the legendary Jimmy Le plays, but somehow, despite all the really cool tricks and potential he got to showcase, it never seems to work out the same when anyone other than Jimmy pilots the deck. It feels like this category has a lot of that. The diehard Rai players are still out there stealing wins with quirky cards like Rictus Tiding, so let that be an inspiration.

Conclusion

In total, I've ranked 25+ decks here, so I'm bound to get some things right. But Ascent Boston will be the big event in North America this season, and we certainly have seen past occasions where the top teams pulled out some new spicy tech for their first major. But between Quicksilver Cup and big regionals in the southeast Asia region, plus store championships being forced to open decklists this season, I feel like a lot of the high-level meta has already made its appearance this season, so this will be a test—both for the NA players, and for Weebs of the Shore, who have the unenviable position of addressing the significant balance concerns around Rile the Abyss and the whole Specter package in a meta that is still rapidly evolving.