World Championship Format Preview: Expedition

Hello, I’m Patrick Sullivan, one of the designers on Eternal, and what follows is the last installment of our article series highlighting the formats for this weekend’s World Championship. Today we’ll be taking a look at Expedition, one of two constructed formats along with Throne.

In contrast to Throne, where essentially every card is permissible, Expedition draws from a much smaller and more recent pool of cards. This pool updates with each set, as older sets “rotate” out of the format. The current legal sets and micro-campaigns are:

• Revelations
• Hour of Glass
• Cold Hunt
• Valley Beyond
• The Eternal Draft Pack

While Throne exists to be a celebration of the history of the entire game, Expedition serves to put a spotlight on the most recent stuff. This makes it a great format for starting the game or picking it up again, as the amount of knowledge and cards it takes to play the format is significantly lower, and the combination of a smaller card pool and rotation means the format evolves at a much faster pace. While Throne is still defined by a handful of cards that appeared in The Empty Throne, the marquee cards and decks of Expedition change all the time. This makes it an especially exciting format for the World Championships, as our competitors can show a lot of creativity and agility in an effort to get ahead of the expected metagame.

So where is the metagame now? That information is fuzzy, as there hasn’t been a large tournament since the release of Valley Beyond and plenty of those cards have “hit hard”, based on the information we can pull from the ladder results. As such, our competitors will have a rough sense of what’s popular right now, but “popular on the ladder” and “present at the World Championships” can be two different things, and I wouldn’t be surprised if something new made its debut this weekend. That said, the format seems to have a handful of staple archetypes, so if you’re new to the format or just looking for more information, the following lists should be instructive.

Some good, old fashioned beatdowns right here. Rakano Aggro features Throne icons torch and finest hour (both legal through the Draft Pack) alongside some of the most efficient attacking units the two factions have to offer. Remember, there are no Market-accessing cards in Expedition, so even in lists this aggressive you’ll see some nods to the late game–more expensive units like Inferno Phoenix, and a few Sketches to provide a few power sinks at a low opportunity cost. This deck also features Steyer's Eyes alongside Iron Priestess, two great tastes that taste great together, and a foundational synergy many Justice decks oriented around cheap units avail themselves of.

Gold-Plated Revolver and Xultan Ambassador create the foundation for Hooru Heroes, a deck with many of the format’s strongest units, including Plunk Wumpkin and Helena, Skyguide. This build reaches into Time for Teryius, Martial Master, Kehanya, Skilled Caster, and Alessi's Choice, trading a bit of consistency in its power base for more individually strong cards that are sources of card advantage. This was perhaps the most popular deck in the format prior to Valley Beyond, but as you can see picked up very little in the way of new options from the micro campaign.

Stonescar is probably a bit lighter in Draft Pack power than Rakano, but it compensates with Syl, No Regrets. Syl is very strong on raw rate, synergizes with high-strength units like Skullbreaker and Impending Doom, and provides cover against expensive sweepers like Harsh Rule. Stonebreaker Bow and Voprex's Choice are two quality pieces of removal that play very well together; remember that recurring Stonebreaker Bow allows you to pay its contract again, allowing it to gain Strength each time it gets played.

Argenport is equipped to play a powerful attrition game with Crownwatch Press-Gang alongside Zido, Cabal Housecat. They work well together on the surface, but especially if you have a Zido with Destiny in your deck–you immediately draw and play the cat, plus draw an additional card for your trouble. Heartstopper is a reasonably-sized unit with some serious upside alongside Zido, Sinister Rumors, and Eavesdrop. Harsh Rule and Stormhalt Plating play cleanup duty. The cheap units may look a little out of place here but the deck is capable of some aggressive openings, and a strategy like this needs some coverage against Plunk, which historically is very punishing for decks built around removal and expensive cards.

Combrei Control eschews the unit synergies found in Argenport and instead focuses on playing a defensive, hard-to-interact-with card advantage game. Defiance, Alessi's Choice, and Jada, Peacekeeper provide the breathing space to leverage power acceleration and card advantage found in cards like Secret Pages, Amber Lock, and A New Beginning, while Svetya's Decree allows Combrei to access up to eight copies of a Harsh Rule effect. The rest of the deck is composed of individual threats capable of winning games by themselves while also providing value even if they’re immediately answered.

Much like the Throne overview, this is an incomplete sampling of all the decks winning in Expedition; the format seems hospitable to a number of strategies and play patterns. We’ll get a chance to see what the format looks like when the bright lights are on it this weekend, so make sure to check out the Eternal World Championships this weekend over at twitch.tv/direwolfdigital, and thanks for reading.