This list, or similar, landed me in the Summit Gothic Season 6 top cut, as well as a 4-1 record at the North Carolina Cornerstone, 2nd place.
She is a very fun avatar to play due to her raw muscle and play patterns, each decision must be considered carefully.
Strengths
- Amazing site positioning and manipulation.
- Huge avatar that swings for sometimes 10 damage, usually more like 5 or 6. This also gives her a sense of late game inevitability.
- Great mobility with air package, and board reset with .
- Powerful suite of Earth minions that are efficiently costed and have great abilities.
- Full set of 6 courts and for stax effects, slowing the opponent down while you build.
Weaknesses
- Very little card drawing. Your card advantage is from making efficient plays, like using to remove several minions at once. You want to draw sites as little as possible for this reason
- Your avatar can get beat up at times while in the pocket, but we can avoid that, as I'll go into later.
- It can be very difficult to finish the game once they are on door. Earth basically has no way to actually do this consistently, relying on minions to do the job. How can you do that if they are or have a ton of cards? You can't! This weakness is mitigated by our air cards, especially the air cards in our .
So lets jump right into the concepts to keep in mind playing AoE!
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Your mulligan will obviously depend on the matchup. I will just list out some of the more major/important matchups to consider. I'll update this section over time as it will end up being quite long...
I'll say that generally speaking, I like to keep a hand with an efficient early beater like or to provide pressure, some kind of ramp, and a later game bomb play. I would avoid keeping a hand of just magic and artifacts or similar, you want some minions.
- You really want to see your stax sites, especially the courts. They will delay him, damage him, make spam harder, etc. is very good for getting to him, as he will certainly be running Earth, and being close means it's hard to and . Your "hook" cards are very useful here as a sudden can literally just win the game outright with Archi not being able to ever get away unless he has or wastes an .
- Don't bother with or , there's too much repositioning happening. You really want and maybe as well as . is useful here against many targets. is very helpful to remove targets and to reposition the very dangerous sites away from you, like .
- Likewise don't bother with hooking, he's moving around too much. We really want here and it's even worth burning your on it. We can cut off his expansion with enough fast site ramp.
- I love to have to burn him off the mask immediately, or to stop .
- We like to see , , , , anything to stem the horde. is very helpful to keep your murder pocket free of skeletons that will perpetually block AoE's attacks.
I almost always keep a hand with regardless of matchup because finishing is so difficult as AoE. Hold that the entire game until it's time to them or you really need to use it on something else.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Placing your sites intelligently as AoE is extremely critical. This can be said about many avatars, but it's especially true for her due to her ability.
Vs Aggressive Decks:
Against fast, aggro decks like or it can be beneficial to either build only your back row (no middle row, at least to start) or a "U" shape placement where the opponent is baited into placing 3 sites up the middle and you build around that.
X = oppponent sites
S = your sites
The back row placement still allows for a lot of AoE damage, as they are now right up on her, and gives you an extra turn or two where the void is providing a buffer between your sites and theirs, and so their charge minions and aggro play patterns will be stifled.
Back Row Placement:
|_________|_________|____X____|_________|_________|
|_________|_________|____X____|_________|_________|
|_________|____X____|____X____|____X____|________|
|____S____|____S____|____S____|____S____|____S____|
The U shape placement is kind of a bait, and more experienced players will often know better, but aggressive players will think you have made a mistake letting them build up the center. This is not the case, as you can now build around it and start swinging for a ton of damage.
U Shape Placement:
|_________|_________|____X____|_________|_________|
|_________|____X____|____X____|____X____|_________|
|_________|____S____|____X____|____S____|_________|
|_________|____S____|____S____|____S____|_________|
Vs Slower Decks:
Against decks like , other Earth decks (we love this!), or slower Water decks, it's best to build more into a corner. Avoid the T shape as this makes your surface area to defend too big. We want tight placement for to really block off attacks. We still have good area for AoE to be big.
Corner Shape Placement:
|_________|_________|____X____|____X____|____X____|
|_________|_________|____X____|____X____|____X____|
|_________|_________|____S____|____S____|____S____|
|_________|_________|____S____|____S____|____S____|
These are the main site placement shapes, but of course some games you will see different shapes. This is especially true if you draw one or more , but we will address that later.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The idea here is to move a site from their border into your domain so that you can continually pound it with AoE for tons of damage. A very common AoE mistake is to start attacking them with AoE very early, such as when she has 4 or so power. Sometimes that is okay, but usually you want to wait until she is larger and the strikes are more impactful, and simply draw/play sites until then while you draw spells and build up. You have a strong late game, do not rush!
How to create the Murder Pocket:
The way we achieve this is usually with , but it can also be done with and . If we do not get the murder pocket in a game, it's okay, but it is very very good to prioritize if you find the cards to do so. If you bait your opponent into building up the middle into a U Shape, congrats, they made the murder pocket for you!
When to create the Murder Pocket:
I also wait until it's the right time to create the pocket, which when the board is stable for you, for example after a . Another card that tremendously helps is as you can camp the spider on their murder pocket site and now minions cannot enter to defend them from AoE's attacks, and it keeps her safe as well. This puts your opponent on a pretty decisive clock to win before you do.
Example of a Murder Pocket after Atlas Wanderer (Wan):
|_________|____X____|____X____|____X____|_________|
|_________|____X____|__S-Wan_|____X____|________|
|_________|____S____|____X____|____S____|_________|
|_________|____S____|____S____|____S____|_________|
You can also use , which is a little different. It can be done up the center if your opponent plays 2 sites up and you don't have 2 sites, then you play it and create the pocket. I honestly usually don't do this as it has to be done early, and I don't want to attack early, I want to play sites and cast minions. And now my opponent has a dangling site of mine to attack themselves. I think if you use the valley in this way, it's better to do it off to the side later in the game, or to reposition your own units, like moving a site suddenly into a spot to hook them.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
As I said, this can be very hard as AoE. Your finishers will be , a into attacking (assuming no defenders]], is the most consistent and best finisher, , (can be fetched by our 1 copy of , basically giving us 2 copies), / / repositioning them into attacking range, .
So we actually have a lot of finishers mostly due to the Air inclusion, but even so I would strongly recommend keeping a finisher in hand before putting them on Death's Door. It can really suck to get them to door, especially if you're playing aggressively and "racing" with them damaging you back, and then simply be top-decking for a finish. We never want to be in that position if we can avoid it! It's better to address their threats and keep yourself safe and healthy until you have a finisher in hand, then door them and have a guaranteed win vs sloppy DD race and then die waiting for a finish.
I will continue to update this primer as I play, or think of things to add. Feel free to give feedback. Enjoy AoE and Sail Away!