Lars Grams’ Deck Tech Series – “Power of Possession”

Intro

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Reinhardt and his Ethereals

For today’s shorter deck feature, we will take a look at Reinhardt, Descendant of the Ethereal King (TUS-078), who comes with his new <Possession> EX Area Zone and a lot of Ethereal support (editor’s note: for a full-blown, 20 minutes deck tech article, check out Lars’ article “Swamp Ninjas“ about Hyde, Solitary Assassin (TUS-068)).

The new zone can be filled with cards (mostly Ethereal resonators) and those have special effects while being in this zone. Some cards also require to remove cards from that zone as an additional cost to get more powerful effects, like Ethereal Lamentations (TUS-065) for example. To fill this new zone, Reinhardt himself allows us to put an Ethereal resonator in there once per turn, as a replacement effect, when the resonator would be sent to the graveyard from the field instead. But other cards also exist to help us populate our <Possession> EX Area.

Without further ado, let’s move right to the decklist.

Decklist

Lars Grams	Reinhardt, Descendant of the Ethereal King
Ruler: Reinhardt, Descendant of the Ethereal King (TUS-078) Child of the Light Moon (NWE-003) Child of the Ethereal Moon (TUS-025)	Magic Stone Deck: (12) 4x Darkness Magic Stone (CMF-101) 2x Secret Stone of the Cat Moon (TUS-103) 4x Secret Stone of the Ethereal Moon (TUS-105) 2x Water Moon Fragment (NWE-105)
Resonators: (27 of 43) 1x Dark Alice, Rabbit Princess (DBV-009) 4x Ethereal Defense Trooper (TUS-027) 1x Neverend, Fairy Tale Dragon (MSW-043) 3x Waterfront Demon (TUS-035) 1x Ethereal Dog (TUS-052) 4x Ethereal Princess (TUS-053) 4x Lailah, Maiden of the Swamps (AOA-092) 1x The Witch of the Fallen Kingdom (ADW-072) 4x Dexia, Ethereal Twin Prince (TUS-062) 4x Sealed One-Eyed Dragon (NWE-079)	Chants: (16 of 43) 4x Angelic Battle Barrier (NWE-001) 4x Keep the Faith! (GOG-006) 2x Dexia’s Advice (TUS-026) 3x Ethereal Lamentations (TUS-065) 3x Soul Absorption (TUS-082) // The Ethereal King (TUS-082J)

Key cards and play lines

In this section we will briefly look into the most important cards and some general play lines which will occur pretty often when you play this deck. The best start this deck can have is most likely with Lailah, Maiden of the Swamps (AOA-092) and banishing it to Child of the Ethereal Moon (TUS-025). This gives us a second stone already on our first turn, while also digging the top three cards for our next play and putting another one of those cards into our <Possession> EX Area for extra effects or later use. The best hit would possibly be a putting a Dexia, Ethereal Twin Prince (TUS-062) into our <Possession> EX Area, milling a Waterfront Demon (TUS-035) to grave and adding an Ethereal Defense Trooper (TUS-027) or Ethereal Princess (TUS-053) to our hand. We can then play any of our Ethereals to banish them in our opponent’s turn with the Waterfront Demon’s effect to put it into our <Possession> EX Area thanks to Reinhardt, Descendant of the Ethereal King (TUS-078)‘s replacement effect. Since we have Dexia in our <Possession> EX Area already, we also get a double trigger, like for example forcing our opponent to discard two cards at instant speed.

Thanks to Ethereal Princess (TUS-053) and a sac outlet like Waterfront Demon (TUS-035), we can discard at instant speed. One of our win conditions is to discard-lock our opponent, which means we fully discard all cards from our opponent’s hand and then keep discarding his/her draw for the turn. Cards like Ethereal Lamentations (TUS-065) also help here, because it can empty our opponent’s hand on the spot (while also clearing his/her board, or refilling our own hand with the second mode). Be careful though, this might force you to banish all cards from your <Possession> EX Area, so make sure you have a potential Soul Absorption (TUS-082) to get them back and also contract when you have a total of 3 cards in your <Possession> EX Area.

Since Dexia, Ethereal Twin Prince (TUS-062) is a pretty important card in this deck (not only for extending the maximum number of slots of our <Possession> EX Area, but also to enable double triggering the “leave the field”-triggers of other Ethereal resonators besides him), we want him as early as possible. One card which helps with that is Dexia’s Advice (TUS-026), which also brings another one-cost resonator with it. Dexia’s Advice is also the reason, why we play some one-off resonators like Neverend, Fairy Tale Dragon (MSW-043), Dark Alice, Rabbit Princess (DBV-009), and The Witch of the Fallen Kingdom (ADW-072). The latter also enables a potential OTK with its Seal ability enabled to get more Witches and finally Pumpkin Witch (CMF-088) from the sideboard for a huge swing.

How to win

The main win condition of this deck will be with the contracted ruler The Ethereal King (TUS-082J), to attack multiple times and flood the board with Ethereal resonators. Nevertheless, there are some other options via Pumpkin Witch (CMF-088) or in a more controlly way with a discard lock. Another controlly way to win. . . or more like to not lose, is to try to get as many Ethereal Defense Trooper (TUS-027) into our<Possession> EX Area as possible, since they prevent 400 damage for each copy of it in our <Possession> EX Area. So if we manage to get a total of 4 copies of it into our<Possession> EX Area, our opponent has to do at least 1700 damage, in order to deal any damage to us.

To make sure our “winning with contract” is not stopped by some cards our opponent has in his/her hand, we can clear them with Ethereal Lamentations (TUS-065) before contracting and then get all the banished Ethereals back into our <Possession> EX Area and only then contract with Soul Absorption (TUS-082). If the opponent has like two counters in hand and tries to counter the Ethereal Lamentations, we can also use the God’s Art of Child of the Light Moon (NWE-003) and let it resolve before casting our contract, to make sure it does not get countered.

Ending Words

I hope this first version of Reinhardt, Descendant of the Ethereal King (TUS-078) gave you a brief starting point on where to begin with the deck. The biggest weakness of the deck is that its powerplays like Dexia’s Advice (TUS-026) or Ethereal Lamentations (TUS-065) are only chant speed, which limits the flexibility of this deck a bit. I would definitely explore a more green route for this deck or add some single discards to make sure our plays resolve. Also Ethereal Researcher (TUS-029) might do some good work, because it makes our opponent’s chants more expensive during our turn.

Thanks for reading and keep on brewing awesome lists 🙂

Cheerz Lars