Deck tier: S
Deck Difficulty: S
Counters: N/A
Does it beat roots though? Yes it does in 40-20 (list in link)
How is this list currently configured? All rounder - mostly ideal for bo1. See meta section and side/maybe board for ideas on how to build your deck if a tournament finally runs bo3.
Matchups:
Sorc (air fire) - 6/4 - You lose to uniques or drawing poorly mostly. The average game goes long and it's whoever draws their good stuff first which is likely you. Managing sites is the most important part of this matchup.
Sorc(earth fire) - 7/3 - Free food. You die to uniques. Don't be dumb about site placement and be smart about where you position your avatar.
Sorc(water fire) 6/4 - They have slower but more bursty turns which is painful. Be smart about what you let live to be greedy. Be smart about atlantean fate and ruler.
Generally, this will be an attrition war between turns 3-10. You will pull ahead on average but the games they draw more of their wizards or must answers, utilizing your sweepers correctly is the way you win those games. Additionally, this is a matchup where I think it's ok to be boxed in if you can't reasonable defend all your sites and drawing action is likely more important than getting boxed in if they have a lot of movement.
PF (land destruction) 6/4 - In your favor. Understanding when to draw sites vs spells is most important in the matchups. Understanding how to play around bells is also required. From their perspective, its hard to draw both land destruction and meaningful pressure early so plan accordingly. Try not to give them sites near your avatar and use blink to facilitate that midgame. Difficult matchup if you don't know what you are doing.
PF midrange - 7/3 - Free food. funnel their minions. Don't bother cutting them off its just more things you need to defend. You lose to craterize / big minion turn but you are more likely to draw your big action first.
PF Aggro 5/5 - Difficult matchup to pilot well. If you don't draw your early spiders and defensive sites, it's extremely hard to keep up with removal because of the nature of avatar. PF opens up your sites to be more vulnerable by playing everywhere. Mulligan aggressively for spiders/ kettletop/defensive sites/egg.
Druid midrange - 6/4- Incidental damage from tawny is your downfall if you don't manage it well. You lose by them highrolling their uniques or drawing poorly. Don't mismanage your sweepers.
Druid spirits - 6/4 - Charge is scary because its behind your defensive sites and it gets around pebbled path. You lose by drawing poorly or mismanaging your avatar into big door turns from jhin / big minion + grapple.
Druid control - 9/1 - I'm not sure how you lose this matchup.
Druid aggro - 8/2 - Free food. Less scary than sorcerer. It's ok to throw spells away for tempo because they don't have inherent means to card advantage. Spider is an allstar against them.
Expect rift valley/pyres and plan accordingly.
Flame caller (air/fire) - 6/4 - This matchup is really about getting your big beefy minions after you stabilize. Try to force them to burn their tap ability on your big minions. Mulligans for sites are most important in this matchup in pebbled path/perilous bridge/pyre etc. Try not to board wipe them without considering your health and charge + tap from them. Managing their creatures with sites/spiders is key. Try to hold onto pyre/pillar for board wipes so you don't immediately die to blink+tap. There are god hands they can have and there are extremely brutal hands you can have. See mulligan section
Flame caller(mono fire) 7/3 - Worse than the air variant. The plan is the same but the speed is slower.
Ele Water control - 8/2 - Don't get leviathan'd. Half their deck is dead to you, just loop spells until you find craterize. Also don't be stupid about atlantean fate.
Ele burn control - 9/1 - It's a craterize war where you see 3x more of your deck
Ele midrange - 8/2 - Same gameplan against other creature decks. Just don't get jhined and funnel creatures with sites/spider. be careful of geyser if you are holding a large amount of power with one spider.
DS Jhin control - 5-5. Expect them to have a means to move you out of gnome hollows. You lose by playing sites/spiders poorly or mismanaging their creatures/graveyard. Knowing when to remove minions is key. It's an attrition war where you both see your deck by the time someone dies and both parties have yard hate. Egg is an all star in this matchup. Dont feed them your morgana or wizard. If you are on a greedier list with feast this matchup is significantly better.
Ench Control - 7/3 - Don't just play spiders into nothing. Undertanding your role is important in this matchup. Sometimes you just have 5 bolts and you can swing on their sites with your avatar. Half their deck is bad against you. Don't be stupid about your site placement in your back row.
Ench aggro(fire air) - 6/4 - Prioritize finding means of lifegain and spider. Your auras kill one thing then die against them so use them as such. Manage their burn auras with blink in the midgame if you don't have disenchant/dispel. Kettletop is good pressure when the board develops and can be used as bait to draw out damage auras. Site placement is key so they dont get double hits on you with things like spin attack.
Ench midrange (fire water) - 5/5 - Matchup is way better sideboarded. Prioritize life gain, threshold sites(not defensive), and kettletop in mulligans. Site placement is key or you will die to double hits from auras before you can heal. Play your vampires on your home site or somewhere the auras cant animate so you dont lose them to strike effects. Vampires, titan, and craterize are the things you are digging for with browse/cantrips in the mid game. Save disenchant / bury effects for wild fire because it gets past your site placement for strike effects on top of you.
just a reminder, site placement against enchantress for everyone:
site site site site site
site site site
DONT GET RIFT VALLEYED ON TURN TWO. ON THE PLAY, PLAY SIDEWAYS AS SECOND SITE. It's mostly a race for damage/damage mitigation. Use lifegain to offset their attacks while you yourself attack with your minions / bolts once they try to get on top of you unless you see good craterize opportunities. Understanding your role in the board state is crucial. Common sense for kettletop is extremely strong to pressure them. Leverage your life for your creatures and race them down when you feel comfortable instead of blocking most of the time.
AOE (E/F) - 6/4 - well timed pyres hurt. Their deck mostly sucks against you but it comes down to chumpers and understanding your role in the matchup. Because they will be on top of you at variable time, knowing if you are on craterize plan or not is important. If they have 5 sites or less, then craterize becomes a timewalk even if you dont damage them but honestly i usually race them with my other burn spells and attack their sites eventually with my avatar at 7 mana. Hard to pilot but it is heavily favored if you know what you are doing. This matchup can easily be teched into as well which would make it a 7/3 matchup.
AOE(E/A) - 7/3 - Generally free - The lack of incidental damage from charge is noticable. Same as above, use defensive sites to slow them down. Be smart about their earthquakes getting value and rift valley as their second site.
This matchup gets incredibly better if you prepare for it. Craterize is dead mostly, prepare to attack with minions and your avatar. Understanding your role based on your cards is crucially important. The best means of using craterize is prepositioning towards their sites away from center line and walking/blink away to blow up their site + damage to them because they will want to stay on top of you to minimize craterize impact.
BM (W/A) - 6/4 - Your defensive sites are some bullshit for them. Sit in a gnome hollow. They win when you fail to draw healing or not meaningfully stalling them with sites. Throw away all your mid/late game spells because you lose to tempo not CA. Gnome hollow as your first site and playing your second site sideways is really strong.
BM (A/F) - 5/5 - Same thing, your site are nuts against them. Sitting in gnome doesnt help against shatter strike. Be smart about where you play your egg (not in your hands).
This matchup is about who gets their toys first or answers to said toys. Kettletop is great in this matchup because bolts at them are not bolts at you or they pressure their life total over time.
Archi control - 5/5 - Whoever craterizes first usually wins. Aggressively mul for your win conditions and merlins tower. If you don't have it setup by turn 6, use your blinks to move onto their sites without sacrificing your tap to draw site ability ideally. Even if your opponent is spamming a bunch of cards, its not actually much card advantage so keep that in mind. I'd rather have craterize locked and loaded than having to dig because in the mirror, you are using your yard to dig harder towards your win conditions anyway. The player who doesn't get their win condition can win by attacking/bolting pretty easily especially if you manage to draw ring and closed the distance as suggested above.
Feast targets: early - craterize, arcane barrage. midgame (when you have craterize first) - divine healing, lightning bolt. midgame (when you dont have craterize) - craterize, divine healing.
Archi tokens - 6/4 - Watchout for boudica/gigantism. Same stuff as above but they have less means to dig through their deck. Save novas for their big turns.
Mulligans:
Against charge aggro - Mulligan for sites and early removal/minions. bolts/kettletop/spiders are MVPS
Against spirit aggro - Mulligan for gnome hollows, spiders, and 5 mana board wipes
Against the mirror - Mulligan for cyclers, acceleration sites, kettletop, and prioritize finding craterize. Your best site to find is merlins tower so you can craterize on turn 5.
Against midrange - Mulligan for sweepers, common sense, and plague/famine.
Against flame caller - Mulligan for early removal/spider/egg and pyre/pillar/defensive sites. Spider, pyre/pilar, and egg are the priority.
Against PF - Mulligan for common sense, kettletop, morgana, and grandmaster wizard. This is generally an attrition war where you need to also be wary of turns 1-4 because you can't prioritize mulls for sites. If you naturally have defensive sites then you are set.
Against BM/AOE - Mull for divine healing and defensive sites.
Against sparkmage - Mull for egg/divine healing/kettletop/princess
How to prepare for specific Meta
Lots of charge aggro? Consider running vampire, holy ground, and more bolts. Guards as a potential substitute for explosion. cut infiltrate. cut death dealer.
Anti agro magoo - https://curiosa.io/decks/cm7tlhufq0021jy03i373gle6
Lots of midrange? Use this list or a more token oriented approach if you don't like direct damage. This list is tuned to be well rounded but take a slight loss to aggro.
Lots of avatars that attack themselves? Cut craterize and run 2x wraetanis titan, 1 grapple, 1/2 arcane barrage or guards, and vampire. Consider cutting famine/plague or other non damage removal as well. Make sure you have 3x quagmire.
Lots of the mirror? The greedier the better. merlin, feast, orb of bal, and rescue. Cut 1-2 novas. Consider dropping fire for more cyclers. Consider dropping the auras. Consider sisters of avalon if the meta is otherwise aggro.
Lots of burrow minions? add lava but this is largely unnecessary
Lots of burn? Consider holy ground and vampires. cut death dealer, morg, and valley+river of flame. Cut plague/famine.
How do you play this deck well?
0) Understanding when you are strong and when you are vulnerable.
1) Understanding damage breakpoints your opponents deck has and being able to anticipate damage accurately.
2) Leveraging your life for card advantage at safe points (see 1). IE: Common sense loop and when to do a bunch or just one for one. I generally tend to do just 2 so that i can recast the thing i get from common sense.
3) Understanding your role in board states. I attack with my avatar surprisingly a lot especially in the mirror and against AOE.
4) Mulligan well.
5) Leveraging your spells well. This deck is incredibly hard to play at the top level because you don't actually have much inherent card advantage but what you do have is incredible card quality and the ability to rebuy those cards. General rule of thumb is if you don't have a good defensive site or means to interact with your opponent, don't play your second site forward. On the play against something that you suspect has rift valley, don't play forward for your second site.
8) using your blinks to preposition in lots of matchups. IE: getting out of grapple line of sight or forward for nova against midrange/aggro
9) creative uses of your spells and sites. IE: EQ to ruin tri sites
Addressing common misconceptions about the deck
1) Your ability doesn't inherently draw you a lot of cards. It's 1/3 a card per spell you play.
2) It's far from unbeatable. It's matchup spread is just great which is what makes it dumb. One small mistake will easily cost you the game.
3) It's a control deck and while it's an S tier deck, that doesn't mean matchups are as free as people make it seem. Inherently, it requires deep understanding of your opponents deck and all playlines your deck has. IE: Getting max value from philostone when you have multiple casters. The skill floor is low but the skill ceiling is insanely high for the avatar. Easily the hardest avatar in the game to master at the moment. (no, enchantress isnt hard to master, thats a meme from alpha honestly. Enchantress was and is largely just a rules knowledge check for both players but one dimensionally so)
4) The utility creatures don't do anything if you build your deck correctly. They can be problematic if they are all played on the same turn but all of them die various cards in the deck. Salt boy? nearly everything. Worry wart? twister to void, infiltrate, bury, deathdealer, plague/famine, blink + punch. Burrow stuff? plague / famine, death dealer, river of flame + any fire spell, merlins tower + any removal underneath.
5) water isn't a great counter but its good in bo1 as your bury effects are dead until they attack but thats only 3 pieces of removal in this list.
FAQ
1) Why not tris? They make you vulnerable to earthquake and lose you some % of games
2) Why annual fair? Allows you to play 3 pip spells of multiple colors without the need for tris and is extremely clutch when your sites are being destroyed.
3) Why 3 colors instead of two? Fire solves a significant portion of problems earth/air could have and abuse philo stone harder. Earth Fire lacks some amount of card quality compared to earth air. Annual fair solves threshold issues anyways.
4) Why are there so many one ofs? At the top end, you don't want to put all your eggs into just craterize because of feast. The other one ofs are just redundant effects I want or common sense targets.
5) What happened to sisters of avalon? Just circumstance of what I expected to go up against. Below are my thoughts on when to use it.
-Put sisters in your deck when the meta is fast and you have a lot of top end cards. You don't win through card advantage but card quality anyway. This gives a blocker, free positioning for nova, and throws expensive top end cards in harsh aggro matchups (or dead cards).
6) When kettletop? It mostly reads, gain 3-4 life and draw a card. Against the mirror or other slower decks, it can easily get in there for 2-6 damage because they don't want you the card. Have this in when the meta is really fast or is targetting your sites. Drop this card when the meta is really slow (likely not a thing).
7) What about water in the list? Thats a different deck(s). I'm sure someone will or has made content around it. Water is good though.
8) What does fire give? Means to deal with the subterrain, more sweepers, and funeral pyre for the mirror/flame caller
9) What does air give? Raw card advantage, defensive sites, the best movement/cycler in blink, accelerated mana, and browse.
10) What does earth give? Defensive sites, divine healing, root spider, and common sense. Notice i didnt mention craterize, every color has finishers it just so happens to be the best but not by a large margin unless you are doing orb. Honorable mention is kettleboy, he does work.
11) When should I play two color over three? When site destruction and generic charge aggro is all you play against. Holy grounds do work and not caringa bout a third color makes things easier.
12) What about bo3 or sideboards? This deck doesn't lose with sideboards and shines in best of 3.