Intro
Welcome Rulers,
I hope you are all doing well and also excited to dive into New Frontiers Format with the cards from the newest edition “Game of Gods: Reloaded“. After a longer break from my side I finally found some time again to play some games and write another article for you. So here we go, this time I will introduce you to one of your new Rulers, which is Shiva, Providence of Nature (GRL-081) // Order of Nature (GRL-081J). Have fun with the deck profile and keep brewing with the new set 🙂
Shiva goodstuff
Shiva is one of the two “Villain”-Rulers in Game of Gods: Reloaded and in my opinion it was the weakest one of the four new rulers I thought first. But my opinion changed after playing a few games and seeing how nice some of the cards synergize together. So I decided to share my first draft of this deck with you, to give you a first impression on how to build a Shiva deck.
Same procedure as last year (and last article) for this Deck Tech Series article; I will start with the decklist first, in case you want to build it and start playing right away. After showing you the list, we will take a look at the list in more detail and I will go over certain interactions and card choices.
Decklist
How to win
The deck is a mix of a control and a beatdown deck (editor’s note: see Heiko’s article where he writes about the different deck archetypes), which also is able to perform a 1-card infinite attack combo (more on that later). So we are quite flexible. On the one hand we can go for a big board and swing with Shiva’s +200/+200 field buff (which we get for ordering a resonator), while on the other hand we can also play more reactively and try to outcontrol our opponent until we can overwhelm him and win.
Key cards
Since we are playing Shiva we can also run one of the best cards in this set in my opinion, which is Rigveda (GRL-080). Not only is it a counter for cards, but also against abilities, or a simply a destruction spell…and since we are playing Shiva, we can choose more than one mode and pay only as much as the number of modes we need. This also makes Rigveda a 1-mana counter in Shiva decks, which of course is very strong.
Another powerful card, which we are also playing 4 copies of in the main deck is Dark Alice in Ma’at (GRL-073). Not only does her enter ability let us remove cards from our opponent’s hand, but we also get a dark Regalia token which we can rest to give another J-Ruler/Resonator -600/-600. So board and hand control in one card.
Dark Alice in Ma’at (GRL-073). Flute, Captive Dragonoid Child // Group of Comets (EDL-004) and Phantasmal Ascendant (GOG-026) help us to get ahead with our will production. Tea Party Before the Decisive Duel (GRL-014) also gives us the option to get ahead of will in certain situations, while also giving cards like Dark Alice and Misteltein, Dark Sword Saint (GOG-008) quickcast to interrupt our opponent’s plays.
Melfee, Traveling Sorceress (ROL-017) acts as a color fixer, while also providing more bodies and therefore more ATK on the board. Odin Enters the Game of Gods (GOG-009) helps to dig deeper into the deck. Note that when removing Tea Party Before the Decisive Duel (GRL-014) as one of our three cards we take a look at, we are still able to return Tea Party to the graveyard to recover a stone and draw a card and make our next Light resonator quickcast.
Another card which is seeing play in mostly Moojdart (MSW-042) & Fiethsing (MSW-053) is The First Boon: Excalibur Cassius, Sword (TST-089). It gives us three more cards that we can cast from the “removed from game” zone. Even though our opponent gets the information which cards they are, it’s more than worth it.
The rest of the cards act as support, like Keep the Faith! (GOG-006) to revive a 1-will resonator, or The Three Beast Warriors (GRL-052) as a way to interact with the opponent’s gameplan (destroying Alice’s Regalias for example).
The last two cards I want to go over are a bit more gimmicky. So lets skip right into our next section.
Infinite attack combo
The two cards I am talking about are The Awakening of Grusbalesta (MSW-080) and Arena Expansion: Mimi Tribe Festival (GRL-070). Since we are playing Shiva, we have always acess to Mimi Tribe Festival, because we are allowed to play it from our sideboard if we revealed it at the beginning of the game. It can also be played for free, if we have a combined total of more than 3000 ATK on our side of the field.
On enter we can search for 2 Mimi Tribes, which also is nice, but the most important ability is that we can recover a stone each time one of our resonators attacks. Since The Awakening of Grusbalesta (MSW-080 turns our stones to resonators, we can attack with them, which triggers the addition, recovers the attacker and lets us attack again. So we can basically attack as often as we want, which should be enough to lower our opponents lifepoints to 0. With 3 different Stones in play we can play the Awakening of Grubalesta for only one will and the 3000 Attack of the three stones is also (almost) enough to play the Arena Expansion: Mimi Tribe Festival (GRL-070) for free from the sideboard.
Playstyle
Like I said before the deck is quite flexible. One of the best openings one can have is most likely Flute, Captive Dragonoid Child // Group of Comets (EDL-004) with a Rigveda (GRL-080) and/or Tea Party Before the Decisive Duel (GRL-014) in Hand. This way we can start with a will advantage, while also having interaction available. On our second turn the best follow up would be an ordered Dark Alice in Ma’at (GRL-073) to steal two cards from our opponent’s hand, while also building field presence and having potential removal with the darkness Regalia token. From there on it depends what our opponent is playing, but in general we should try to get small amounts of damage in, while keeping our opponent under control. When there is a possibility for a potential OTK (because our opponent is tapped out, or we get information about his hand cards from playing a Dark Alice), we can try to win the game with the infinite attack combo.
Ending words
I hope this list might give you a good starting point with Shiva for the upcoming (editor’s note: and final!) New Frontiers Format. There are of course more possible variants to play Shiva; like with Mimi Tribe cards for example, or with the two cards Rudra, God of Rampaging Winds (GRL-047) and Agni, God of Rampaging Flames (GRL-016), which can get out of control really fast with the amount of +100/+100 counters they generate if your opponent does not deal with them quickly.
Have fun with this list and keep brewing 🙂
Cheerz
Lars
