Welcome back to Ashes players for another installment of Re-Constructed. I know you played with another Phoenixborn when Astrea wasn't looking. Don't worry if you grovel, she might forgive you.
By now, you should already be familiar with the deckbuilding restrictions we're working with, and with these Divine Magic and Sympathy Magic decks, you'll also need Lion's Law or Soaksend's Song accordingly. Today's deck is about control like most Charm decks, but this entry isn't about exhaustion. Instead of destroying her deck, Astrea seeks to break her willpower... warning her, so to speak.
The Messiah of Ishra (Re-Astrea)
Rebuilt by Andrew DiLullo
6 Divine, 4 Charm// Required sets:The Gravity Masters,The Spirits of Memory
3x Summon Reminder
Summon 2x Steadfast Guardian
Summon Weeping Ghost 1x
3x Law of Fear
2x King's Spell
2x chained creations
3x kneeling
1x Meteoro
3x Mark of the Goddess
1 x open memories
1x Holy Knight
2x sun sister
1x Imperialer Ninja
2x Holy Relics
1x call to action
2x Sympathieschmerz
So reminders sound a little weird here. Astrea has gone through many changes in Ashes Reborn, not the least of which is an additional shrinkage of an already cramped battlefield. Five slots are tight, but four slots are practically empty. So why play a unit that effectively takes up your entire battlefield? For now, let's stick a pin in and start as usual: examine what the pre-convict does. Although Astrea is a Phoenixborn with 4 battlegrounds, Astrea's deck features three different summon books, which almost feels like a sick joke until you use them. The Steadfast Guardian is now limited to one unit, and the extra books allow you to upgrade an existing Guardian instead of creating a new one, which is really nice. Lightbringer, as we saw in Echo's deck, is a low number summon that is primarily intended to die quickly while forcing your opponent to use crippling attacks. Finally, Weeping Spirit is a high-summon unit that goes to the opponent's board, so we can share the feeling of tight space. With Astrea you have a myriad of options to control and stop progress: Sun Sister heals your damaged units, Mark of the Goddess lets you hit an enemy unit with another unit, Kneel simply knocks the entire board down for a turn and calls for - Action lets you keep blocking or guarding even when it looks like you're completely exhausted. Astrea herself also has one of the strongest Phoenixborn abilities in the game, exhausting any threatening unit by one base and bringing her effective battlefield coverage closer to five. Finally, as highlighted in Leo's deck, we have Imperial Ninja to put some exhaustion pressure on our opponents. Astrea is amazing in this crunchy slowplay, a perfect embodiment of the concept of total control. Much like Sunday Mass, playing Astrea is an ordeal, requires a lot of knowledge and is definitely not for everyone, but it can be genuinely satisfying for a select few.
Unfortunately, Astreas Precon can't really win with an exhaustion game plan. All you need to crush decks is Weeping Spirit and Imperial Ninja and a handful of cards that add about 3-5 turns to the game. It's not enough, so I think we have two options here. Option 1 splits the deck into a traditional exhaust machine: another three-eyed owl deck, this time with a cool upgrade tool in Devotion and a spellboard option like Memory Theft or Purge to really wreck your opponent's deck . This is certainly a reasonable choice, but I wanted to lean more towards Astrea as a tight control deck that plays with inevitability, and Admonition seems like the best way to do that. So instead, I choose Option 2, a slow-burn deck that emphasizes Charm's strengths less and Astrea's strengths more. It is better to remove the pews and spread out the prayer mats, as there will be many kneeling.
Reminders replace Lightbringer as our main game board, and we're adding an essential piece of writing to the spell board: Law of Fear is an absolutely awesome deterrent that takes 1 damage off of every attacker that comes our way, and it shouldn't affect us a lot, since we hardly want to attack. It can also be used as a cheap way to deplete Three-Eyed Owls... or donated Spirits of Sorrow. When playing this deck, I tend to imagine Law of Fear as a soft kneeling, meaning I have about six rounds of knees to work with. There are still threats that can break through this strategy, particularly units with Terrifying, but these threats can be dealt with directly by Astrea's ability. The main benefit of Law of Fear is simply statistical, almost none of our cards see any downside to the effect. Steadfast doesn't attack much, and the reduced power of attackers also means it can protect more effectively. Reminders have 2 Health, which means the Law of Fear keeps them alive from the Winged Lioness's attacks. And luckily, Mark of the Goddess doesn't lose any of its power, as Law of Fear only weakens attacking units.
But of course reading about the Grace of Astrea is only the first step, the real lessons come through prayer and kneeling is the method. Every Astrea player is aware of Kneel's power, but it's actually stronger here than it was pre-con. Due to the timing of the abilities, Guilt 1 actually triggers after the exhaustion tokens are removed, meaning that Reminders can still deal damage even if they are depleted. Also, all your spell board cards can be effective even on a crowded battlefield if you have some focus abilities: Steadfast Guardians can be upgraded instead of summoning a new one, and if you don't summon Reminders it can damage the opponent to 1 directly, causing the summoning book to be effectively turned into a Frostbite.
Filling out the rest of the deck are some useful toolbox cards and even some allies. If I think I can do it, I aim for three more reminders, but realistically, we'll probably need to trade a reminder for an ally here and there, especially in the early turns. Imperial Ninja is still a good pressure option against control decks, but Holy Knight also gives us a good defensive tool against them. Holy Relics might seem like an odd inclusion, but an upgraded Steadfast Warden can suddenly become a threat, especially when combined with Focus 1, Call to Action, and the Sun Sister ability that keeps them healthy. Finally we have Chained Creations, a card that I can't help but include in so many divine decks, and once again it serves to let us better control the pace of the game and slow down our opponent's summoning plans to even more inflict revenge for their faults. of faith. While Admonition is our main burn tool, we get some surprising overkill and a clever use of the Mark of the Goddess in Sympathy Pain.
The top five:
Since we win with reminders, we need to come up with that game plan ASAP, so Open Memories is here to pick up a second book. We also want Steadfast Guardian, as it is one of the most robust Summons at our disposal. That said, we need to hold on to the confrontation. Summon Weeping Spirit is very good against small battlegrounds (five or less) as the jam is pretty brutal and needs to be dealt with. It can also be good against larger battlegrounds as an issue builds up over time, but on smaller battlegrounds the soul shines through. If the opponent has any self-sacrifice effects like burn, replace Weeping Ghost with Royal Charm. Imperial Ninja is pretty solid against other charm decks or basically any opponent with 0 attack units, and it can also be a solid attacker against depleted units (which shouldn't be hard to find when playing Astrea). Law of Fear or Meteor can be incredibly effective against hyper-aggressive decks. Finally, I enjoy Holy Knight on the rare occasions when I'm playing an opponent who loves to attack my units with spells and tricks.
There's also a shaky start where you use Open Memories to get a second Steadfast book and start with Holy Relics. You have a 3/5/1 Steadfast Guardian that can instantly increase to two attacks. I don't recommend this, but if you want to double it, it's an option.
Alternative translations:
We run Admonishers as our main gameplan and it's really hard to do that if you don't have Admonishers, so you definitely need The Ghosts of Memoria to build this deck; Also, Chained Creations are a nice bonus. Masters of Gravity is very solid, with Law of Fear being a great way to extend our warnings, and Holy Relics working well with our Steadfast Guardians. That said, we might show up without Echo's contributions, but that will put us under closer surveillance. Replace the Laws and Relics with more Pains of Sympathy and Memory Steal or Ice Bite to reinforce our burn game plan. Redirection is also a valid option, as missing a reminder isn't so bad (we can just create another one). It's definitely going to be a little tough, but Astrea will prevail.
Advance:
Before suggesting replacements for this deck, I want to address Astrea's main weakness: open attack. Kneel, Seduce, Mark of the Goddess, Law of Fear, and even Meteor are all amazing tools... unless your opponent just swings everything at the start of the round, which renders all of your tools utterly useless. Most of the time we deal with this by blocking all our units and resuming as needed (we probably won't kill any of our opponent's units, but that's really fine), but against something big and terrible, it really helps to have redirection in your corner . If other data types are your thing, Illusion features the incredibly solid Figures in the Fog and even Shadow Guard, while Time features Stasis and the newly revealed Outmatch. While there is particularly unique protection built into ...basic?
Therefore, Safeguard originally made it into the deck, but it was shortened to avoid diving into too many expansions. However, it's a surprisingly powerful tool with Astrea, especially in decks that use Kneel or Law of Fear. The idea is to find the point where the round ends and at that point cast Safeguard on Astrea while executing a pass to your main action. If you time it well or your opponent doesn't have a main action to extend the turn, keep Safeguard's protection on the next turn. This means that even if your opponent acts first, he won't be able to damage you until your next turn, giving you a window to use one of your control tools and effectively "ruin" your opponent's turn. If you have Safeguard and want to try it out here, I recommend running 2 copies and replacing 1 Sun Sister and 1 Chained Creations.
Finally, there's a much stranger approach to Astrea, going full throttle with Natural and Ceremonial, presumably ditching Charm entirely. I won't go into detail because it looks like a completely different deck, but I wanted to mention the amazing synergy that Mark of the Goddess has with Strengthen. In that rare case, you're actually using Boosts to beef up your opponent's unit before using Mark to effectively add 2 stats to the burn. It's quite sharp when it comes to burn strategies and can be worth playing with just to see the look on your opponent's face.
That's all we have for this article. Never be fooled. Especially that idiot Harold. As we'll see next time, he has a bad tendency to tug at people's hearts...
Andrew DiLullo is an animator, game designer, and luckily, a writer. After first discovering the Ashes towards the end of the first round of expansion in 2016, he has played ever since and currently manages the Bay Area Ashes group in California. He has been particularly active on various community projects since Ashes was first canceled and is now turning his attention to Reborn as the game picks up. He is currently designing a board game in his spare time and occasionally writes in his online journal:The Lighthouse Library.