Game:

Inscryption (2021)

Duration: 11:24

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With setup completed in the last video, this segment is not nearly so bad. Grimora's minions are even easier than Leshy's with the Deathly Deck, and can pretty easily be beaten just with the initial 20 cards you start with. I over-optimize both of these fights and could have won them faster by not worrying about building a Bone stockpile.

Grimora herself is much more difficult. You want to deal an initial point of damage to the Bone Hound somewhere. Then, you only need to get a 2/3 Bone Heap in order to kill the Bone Hound and then the Sarcophagus before it can ascend to a Mummy Lord. The next Bone Hound will still be a problem, since you can't lure it back over to your buffed Bone Heap. I get a tricky draw at the beginning and have to sacrifice a Bone Heap and Tomb Robber as chump blockers. Fortunately the next few rounds give me what I need to get the Bone loop going.

The Deathly Deck works well against Grimora since her "return your cards as undead" trick doesn't impact Bone Heaps, it just resets them. Gravediggers, Necromancers, and Tomb Robbers can all still serve their primary functions as well, albeit with lesser stats, and the Necromancer becomes free which is arguably an improvement. By carrying 10 Bones into phase 2, I'm able to simply play my undead Bone Heap and instantly win. Even if the Bone Hound had been out I could have just used one of the other undead cards to move it after laying the Bone Heap.

I want to talk a little about Draugrs. There are several factors that make the Deathly Deck trickier than the other decks, and Draugrs are a big one. At first they might seem like they're just a 1-Bone chump blocker, and you might cycle them out of your deck early on. I think this is a mistake, as Draugrs significantly increase the strength of a Deathly Deck since Skeletons can't be used for chump blocking. And once you understand them better, a Draugr is actually a bit of an upgraded Skeleton. You play a Draugr for 1 Bone, but if you use the Hammer on it you get the Bone back and leave a Skeleton. So in essence you play a free Skeleton, the same as any other Skeleton card. This means Draugrs give you the option of playing a chump blocker or a Skeleton in a single card, which is a powerful choice to have available.

There's one obvious exception to this, though, and that is when you have 0 Bones available. Specifically on the opening turn. If you collect an Ancient Obol and make the offering to the Bone Lord and receive the Bone Lord's Femur, you'll start every encounter with 3 Bones. Not only is this generally a tremendous boost to the Deathly Deck (which often loses battles in the first 2 turns because of mana starvation) but it allows you the option of replacing all of your Skeletons with Draugrs, albeit at some risk. If you play a combination of cards that reduces you back to 0 Bones, you can find yourself encountering starvation or required to use the Hammer to sacrifice something.

I'm not using the Bone Lord's Femur since the goal of this run was to play as a "pure Grimora" experience, and like the Mycologists I consider the Bone Lord's blessings to fall outside of that scope. For any normal player wanting to do a Deathly Deck run, though, I recommend getting the Bone Lord's Femur immediately (it can be done before beating any Scrybe, you'll just need to get 6 extra Foils from the Prospector and buy out the bottom right stack in the Deathly shop). If you can draw two Skeletons and a Revenant on turn 1, the Bone Lord's Femur will let you win almost any battle in the game instantly, which makes the Deathly Deck broken.

0:00 World map
0:21 Sawyer
3:10 Visiting the Bone Lord
3:32 Royal
6:08 Crypt puzzle
7:10 Grimora

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