World Championship Format Preview: Throne

Hello, I’m Patrick Sullivan, one of the designers on Eternal, and welcome to Part 2 of our series highlighting the three formats for this weekend’s World Championships. (you can find Part 1 on Draft here) Today, we’re going to take a look at Throne constructed, one of two constructed formats at the Championships, along with Expedition.

What is Throne? Well, everything. Every set, micro-campaign, promo card, you name it–if it was part of the competitive game at any point, it is legal in Throne. This makes the format a celebration of the totality of the game’s history, as well as a place where novel interactions between cards and keywords made years apart get to intersect in fascinating ways.

Of course, that can also make Throne a daunting place to get started–there are thousands of cards in Eternal, dozens of keywords, and a variety of discrete interactions that shape the format in ways big and small. On top of that, there has been a recent set (Cold Hunt) and micro-campaign (Valley Beyond), which in concert with a few rounds of live-balance changes have made the format appreciably different than it was even a few months ago.

What follows is a broad-strokes summary of the format, critical aspects of it, and a handful of top-performing decklists from our Ranked ladder. That isn’t to say that these are the lists or even archetypes that will appear in the World Championships–with so much money and prestige on the line, players will be working hard to be a step ahead of the competition, and maybe debut something completely unexpected. That said, the lists below will definitely inform the competitor’s testing, if nothing else. We know that when it comes to helping people get acclimated to a format there’s no substitute for decklists, and so this information is useful regardless of what actually emerges in Throne this weekend.

A Note On The Market:

These lists will contain a separate list of cards known as The Market. Though it technically “exists” in Draft and Expedition, no legal cards reference it, and so for this tournament it will be strictly the purview of Throne. The Market is a separate zone with up to five unique cards. The only strict rule is “no card in your deck can also be in your Market”–you can have up to four Dizo's Office in your deck, or one in your Market, but not both at the same time. There are a number of definitional cards and cycles–Merchants, Smugglers, Grafters, Etchings, and others–that allow players to draw cards out of their Market in various ways. Playing with a Market is not strictly mandatory, but given how powerful the enablers are and how important it is to have specific answers to the litany of strategies one finds in Throne, nearly every competitive list has one.

All Markets are different, and some combo decks leverage their market to draw the same pieces as reliably as possible. In the more traditional case, they are typically composed of a blend of precise reactive cards, haymakers for games that go on for a long time, and maybe a “generically good” card to swap in when you draw an ineffectual card against a particular opponent. As an example, my current Throne list and by a wide amount the strongest deck in the format, Mono Even Shadow Midrange:

The Market:

.Edict of Makkar: Extremely efficient against Time and Justice units
Burglarize: High-upside against Relic-centric strategies
The Speaking Circle: Random late game power, especially against decks that are more controlling and/or play their own Sites.
Dizo's Office: Random late game power, especially against decks that play with a bunch of units and/or seek to deal damage in “traditional” ways.
Invasive Creeper: Strong synergy with Vine Grafter, as the latter automatically triggers the Fate of the former, allows you to churn through a “dead” card, and allows you to put Vine Grafter’s Regen and stat bonus somewhere in the event you have no units in hand. Backdoor combo kills with its Ultimate clause alongside another Vine Grafter and Twisted Farmer and/or other Mandrakes you may have RNG’d yourself into over the course of the game.

With that, some lists you might actually see this weekend, or on the ladder on your own time.

Perhaps the biggest winner from the Valley Beyond micro campaign was Elysian Dinosaurs. The deck has been in the fringes of Throne for years, as Evelina, Valley Searcher and Avisaur Patriarch were appealing buildarounds even with a more modest selection of units to surround them with. Now, with Dinosaur Nest and Finned Herbasaur, the deck is equipped to play both a bursty, stat-driven game along with a handful of cards, like Alhed Ascending, Mirror Image, and Jennev Merchant, that give the deck some lift in games that go long.

The Market: Permafrost as cheap, above rate unit interaction, Swift Refusal for non-fast spells, especially sweepers like Harsh Rule or Saloon Massacre, Trials and Tribulations for small units (notice how many 3+ health units are here to profit from the survival bonus), Sodi's Spellshaper as a mixture of interaction, card advantage, and raw rate, and a Curiox, All-Seeing to help grind extremely long games.

An Eternal staple since the Closed Beta, Combrei Midrange typically blends the efficient units and diverse interaction one associates with Time and Justice. Cards like Jada, Peacekeeper are emblematic of the strategy–there is no “good choice” for your opponent if you find dealing damage and ramping your power to be useful at the same time. The deck is capable of winning somewhat quickly, but wins more traditionally on the back of strong individual units like Svetya, Lightbringer, or cards that can produce game-winning advantages at a low opportunity cost, like Stormhalt Plating or Diana, Faith's Shield.

The Market: Gavel's Insight as Relic interaction that isn’t dissonant with the deck’s primary play pattern, Equalize has a number of spots in which it is easily the strongest card in the entire game so why not?, Reclaim as generic swapping/resource accrual (note that Winchest Merchant can both find the card and trigger Onslaught the following turn), Sword of Unity as preemptive cover against sweepers and/or to blow up any unit-and-combat-centric game, and Svetya, Merciful Orene as a bomb for deep games.

Another tale as old as time, with plenty of Closed Beta staples alongside relatively new additions like The Rat King and League Explorer combine to create a slick, efficient beatdown experience. Not a lot here in terms of concession to a long game–Warcry triggers can stack up, Champion of Chaos is really problematic for certain decks to kill, but unlike Elysian Dinosaurs this deck isn’t offering much in terms of late-game resistance, besides spells that can damage players directly and units with Charge.

The Market: Bullseye for the stuff Bullseye can kill, Combust as a power-efficient way of killing problematic units (note: you’ll often see Open Contract in this spot, but as this list is playing a full four main this is the next-best option; noteworthy that the Merchant fulfills the sacrifice obligation regardless and you’ll often have a bunch of stinkers laying around anyway), Flame Blast as a deep game punkout, Kaleb's Persuader as a mid-game punkout that can also set you up towards Flame Blast, and Vicious Highwayman as a mixture of generic, on-curve rate and occasionally sick against decks with small units and/or decks trying to race.

Named after the deck-defining Kira Ascending, Hooru Kira strives to play a variety of cheap, efficient units along with 1-cost spells that target units to fulfill Renown and Renown-adjacent requirements on Kira, Hojan, Crownbreaker, and Hooru Envoy. The deck is brutal to play against once it gets on the front foot, generating a ton of presence on the table while also making power and card positive exchanges against opposing interaction. However, the deck doesn’t play well from behind, so its under a lot of pressure to come out fast and draw enough undepleted power to advance its board while leaving the shields up.

The Market: Endless steps as a dual wield method of leveraging attacks while triggering the hallmark units, Mirror Image as generic value/swapping plus additional interaction with Valkyrie Enforcer, Pristine Light against bigger units (triggering the Onslaught and making it essentially one-sided is trivial for this deck), Wind Conjuring as generic swapping/Permafrost interaction/randomly incredible in combat/Invoke spikes in deep games, and Korovyat Palace as an anti-control, deep game threat.

A surprise return to the Throne metagame after the release of Cold Hunt, Armory strategies (decks centered around grinding out advantages with Relic Weapons and sturdy units, typically with some recursion baked in) got a huge boost from Stormhalt Plating, Oni Forgesmith, Bullseye, and Stonebreaker Bow. All of these cards speak to either keeping up early or overwhelming late, two hallmarks of the archetype. Dichro, Conqueror got perhaps the most pronounced boost of any card in a recent live-balance patch, further invigorating the deck. If you like playing a controlling deck that doesn’t sit on its hands all day, something like this might be for you.

The Market: There isn’t one! This isn’t for the sake of diversity, but rather because this is one of our best-performing decks on the ladder. I do occasionally run into lists with Ixtun Merchant, Winchest Merchant, and/or Hidden Road Smuggler, but I see the case for cutting them. The bodies are out of place with the decks strategy, and since the deck wants to play a ton of power and struggles to accrue additional cards it isn’t trivial swapping stuff in and out of the Market. I guess if you’re really committed to playing a Market I’d probably start with something like Slay, Harsh Rule, Tavrod, Auric Broker, and then two other slightly different Slays.

This is only a drop in the vast ocean that is Throne, and none of this is to suggest that these are the “best” decks (excluding mine, established above), but rather a sampling of what the format has to offer, and hopefully some inspiration to get your own playing and brewing going. Make sure to stay tuned for my upcoming Expedition article, and mark your calendars for this weekend as we bring you coverage of the Eternal World Championships.