📘 Book of Bones — Necromancer Attrition Control (Primer)
Budget: $48.74 shipped as of 1/27/25 using TCGplayers cart optimization
Avatar: Necromancer
Elements: Air / Water
Game Plan: Skeleton-driven attrition and control
Deck tech video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze9Emer3wE8
link to affiliate tcg players mass entry: https://partner.tcgplayer.com/4G69N0
🧠 What This Deck Is Trying to Do
Book of Bones is an attrition-control deck built around one idea:
Turn cheap, disposable bodies into cards, control, and inevitability.
You are not racing your opponent.
You are outlasting them.
This deck wins by:
- generating Skeletons every turn,
- forcing unfavorable trades, and
- slowly locking the board until your opponent runs out of meaningful actions.
If the game goes long, you are favored.
🧙♂️ Understanding the Avatar: Necromancer
Necromancer is the engine that makes everything work.
Key abilities:
- Tap → Play or draw a site
- This gives the deck incredible consistency. You will almost never miss mana or thresholds.
- Once per turn, pay (1) → Summon a Skeleton token here
- This is your fuel. Skeletons are:
- blockers,
- sacrifice fodder,
- removal enablers,
- and win conditions when combined with other cards.
Always ask yourself:
“Can I afford to make a Skeleton this turn?”
Most of the time, the answer is yes.
🗺️ Early Game (Turns 1–3): Set Up and Stall
Your early turns are about stability, not aggression.
What you want to do early:
- Play sites every turn (use Necromancer’s tap ability if needed)
- Deploy cheap minions like:
- Novice Necromancer
- Apprentice Wizard
- Porcupine Pufferfish
- Start making Skeletons
What you should NOT do:
- Rush attacks on the enemy Avatar
- Trade valuable control spells too early
- Overextend into bad fights
Blocking is good.
Trading is good.
Dying is often good — as long as you get value.
☠️ Midgame (Turns 4–7): The Attrition Engine Turns On
This is where Book of Bones starts to feel unfair.
Your main goals:
- Keep Skeleton production flowing
- Start converting bodies into advantage
- Control positioning on the board
Key synergies:
- Bone Jumble
- Turns Skeletons into a reusable minion. Once it hits the cemetery, it’s very hard to keep dead.
- Pile of Skulls / Open Mausoleum
- Add extra Skeletons beyond Necromancer’s once-per-turn limit.
- Wiccan Tools
- Fix awkward thresholds and turn extra bodies into cards.
- Book of the Dead
- Lets you replay dead minions — your cemetery becomes a resource, not a graveyard.
At this point, your opponent should feel like:
- Every trade favors you
- Every removal spell barely matters
- You always have something left on the board
That’s exactly where you want them.
⚔️ Board Control & Interaction
You don’t run removal just to “answer threats.”
You run interaction to control how fights happen.
Important control tools:
- Freeze / Grievous Insult
- Buy time, shut down abilities, and prevent explosive turns.
- Blink / Tactical Move
- Positioning wins Sorcery games. These spells let you:
- save key units,
- set up forced fights,
- and protect your engines.
- Wave of Eviction / Dredge
- Water-based board control that breaks formations and creates bad trades for your opponent.
Use these reactively, not aggressively. Let your opponent commit first.
🧟 Closing the Game: How You Actually Win
You usually win in one of three ways:
1️⃣ Forced Trades with Lord of Lies
Lord of Lies lets you choose who fights — and that’s deadly when:
- you have expendable Skeletons,
- and your opponent doesn’t.
Every activation pushes the board further in your favor.
2️⃣ Grinding Damage with Regurgitator
Regurgitator turns dead minions into:
- repeated projectile damage, or
- graveyard denial.
This lets you:
- pick off key units,
- pressure life totals,
- and shut down opposing recursion.
3️⃣ Board Swings with Draconian Bonekite & Witching Hour
These are your “break the stalemate” cards:
- Draconian Bonekite wipes clusters and replaces them with Skeletons.
- Witching Hour turns a stalled board into an evasive, lethal attack.
You don’t need to rush these — wait until they end the game or lock it up.
🏰 Playing the Atlas Correctly
Your Atlas is built for consistency, not tricks.
Key points:
- You are Water-heavy — hit W2 reliably for midgame threats.
- Air is secondary but steady — enough for Blink, movement, and disruption.
- Several sites generate or reward Skeletons, reinforcing the main plan.
- Necromancer’s tap ability smooths out awkward draws.
Don’t overthink site placement.
Prioritize:
- Mana consistency
- Defensive positioning
- Skeleton synergy
✅ Common Mistakes to Avoid
- ❌ Overattacking early
- ❌ Forgetting to make a Skeleton each turn
- ❌ Trading control spells for low-impact threats
- ❌ Ignoring positioning (nearby locations matter!)
Remember:
You win by surviving and exhausting the opponent — not by racing.
🏁 Final Thoughts
Book of Bones is a budget deck that:
- teaches strong Sorcery fundamentals,
- rewards patient play,
- and scales incredibly well into long games.
It’s resilient, flexible, and miserable to play against —
which, honestly, is exactly what a Necromancer deck should be.
If you like decks that always feel like they have one more turn,
this one’s for you. 💀🦴
