Game:

Inscryption (2021)

Duration: 23:30

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45

This deck is bad. And I don't mean like the Power Glove.

This is the only deck I've played with that I've deigned to say that. It took me a full ninety-two minutes to complete this run, far worse than any of the others. Some of that can maybe be chalked up to bad luck, but that's sort of the point. This deck is far too RNG dependent and unreliable for almost every fight in the game.

It makes sense. Running a triple-Mox Magical Deck is tricky under the best of circumstances, and this is not that. You have no hybrid Mox cards and none of the Masters. You only start with one card for each color, meaning aside from Mage Pupils--which you only have 5 of--you have to draw exact pairings in order to be able to do anything useful. You get 2 Mage Knights which are decent at 1/3, but they die if you run out of Mox so they're more fragile than 3 Health would imply. You get 2 Junior Sages; at 1/2 they're only barely better than Mage Pupils, but they won't die if your Mox gets wiped so they're probably your best card, if you can play them. So this deck's best card is a more-difficult-to-play Stoat. That should tell you everything you need to know.

You also get 2 Blue Mages, a 0/1 card that lets you draw 1 card for every Mox on the board. These can very occasionally allow you to draw a missing piece you need to get something useful going, but since you're unlikely to ever have more than 2 Mox on the board, and usually only 1, then in most cases you would have been better off drawing any other card instead. They don't even function particularly well as chump blockers because you still need to have access to a Blue Mox to play them and most of the time if you have a Blue Mox and Blue Mage in your hand, the fight is probably already going poorly. In the worst case scenarios Blue Mages just hasten you toward Starvation, which is already a constant threat with this deck since it has no attack options greater than 1 ATK.

I get both Junior Sages early on the Prospector and Angler so they go down easy. This was my fifth attempt on the Trapper, which is about the same across all starter decks, but I suspect in this instance it's a lucky outcome. I manage to keep a constant barrage of renewed offense and win the battle before the Raven comes in. The Raven can't be blocked with this deck and best case scenario he's going to deal 6 damage before you can kill him, so he's as much of a problem as he could possibly be. Leshy, as is often the case, isn't as bad as the Trapper. His first phase is pretty easy to win consistently but you need to make sure you make decent Death Cards, something with no cost and 1 ATK, preferably without Gem Dependence. This was my third attempt on him, only because I messed up my Death Cards in the first two encounters and couldn't win phase 2.

Grimora's minions are nothing special. I make some significant misplays on the Sawyer fight, I should have won on turn 4 by letting my Mage Pupil in my hand chump block the Bone Hound, but that shows these fights should all be winnable even under somewhat bad conditions. Grimora is just awful, maybe the worst encounter I've experienced yet. Getting this winning run took over 30 minutes of attempts. In phase 1 you need to be able to play 2 Mage Knights, Junior Sages, or Mage Pupils, meaning you'll need both of their cards and the proper Mox color (any for Pupils), and another card to lure the Bone Hound to block in the Sarcophagus. For phase 2 you'll want to do the same thing again, but this time you'll specifically need either Junior Sages or Mage Knights because they need to be able to absorb at least one hit from the Zombie. You need a lot of blockers and the Zombie can't go after your Mox, so there's many things that can go wrong.

The Factory minions are business as usual, maybe a little harder than average. Sadly I lost my perfect record against P03, as he thrashed this hand for twenty minutes due to Starvation. I ultimately realized I wasn't going to be able to beat him with my deck, and converted to a strategy of stealing his Melter and Bolt Hound to do the job for me. This required some tactical detonation of the Explode Bots, but I eventually pulled it off.

In the Tower, the Impaled Mage can be a bit difficult because of the Ruby Golems, and she has enough offense to make it difficult to retain your own Mox. This fight took me a few attempts and ultimately played out weird, so I'm not really sure what to make of it overall. Graciously, after suffering through all of that pain this deck still maintains most of its advantage against Magnificus, and he went down for me on our first battle.

So to give my final ranking of starting decks only:

1. Techno
2. Beastly
3. Deathly
4. Magical



0:00 Deck and Clover
0:28 Prospector
0:56 Angler
1:39 Trapper
2:38 Leshy
5:13 Kaycee
6:06 Sawyer
8:09 Royal
8:51 Grimora
11:16 Inspector
12:22 Melter
13:28 P03
16:20 Slime Mage
17:17 Impaled Mage
19:07 Lonely Mage
20:30 Magnificus

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