For the past two weeks you have been sharing your awesome ideas for the decks with us and now it is time to conclude what ideas are the best. However, before we jump into the results let's look closely at Firebringer and Hate Seed, the cards that contestants had to build a deck around.

Firebringer and Hate Seed — Card Analysis

These two creatures can be very valuable in decks with a lot of Higher Attack Than Life (HATL for short) creatures. You only need to play 4-5 creatures before Firebringer and Hate Seed become worth their cost. However, until then they are just useless cards that take place in your hand. Similarly to Windstorm Colossus and Soul Eater, Firebringer and Hate Seed are the late game cards that you don't want to draw too early. And this is exactly the reason why you should probably not have both of these cards in your deck.

Wait, what? But Hate Seed and Firebringer both benefit from the same thing, if you've already decided to add one in your deck then the other is an auto-include, isn't it? Well, it is not entirely untrue, however, it ain't simple as it seems. The problem is that Faeria like any other card game is inherently RNG-dependent and the player when he builds his deck has to respect it. As explained above Firebringer and Hate Seed both are very bad if drawn early and it is only natural that player doesn't want to draw these cards early or, rather, wants the probablity of these cards drawn early to be as low as possible. And this can be accomplished by having them as few as possible. As simple as that.

However, is 6 cards (3x Firebringer and 3x Hate Seed) that bad? According to my calculations, the probablity of having 2 or more, for example, Windstorm Colossi (3x in your deck) in the first 5 cards in your deck (your hand + 2 next cards you draw) after you mulligan (assuming you always mulligan Colossi) equals 1-2%. Now, if you have 3x Firebringer and 3x Hate Seed the probablity goes up to 10%. It means that in 1 out of 10 games you will be at a massive disadvantage early game because you basically have your hand size reduced by 2 or more. This is an over simplifed example and it doesn't take into accout situational cards like Siefers Wrath and Flash Wind that do not help you early game unless you already have a creature on board that wasn't cleared by enemy removals. In this case the probablity of having a dead hand is even higher.

To sum up, when you have cards like Firebringer, Hate Seed, Windstorm Colossus, Soul Eater, you should think closely how many of them to put in your deck. It doesn't mean that you absolutely should not have both 3x Firebringer and 3x Hate Seed in your deck, but in general you don't want to have more than 4 of these. In some cases you can unclude all 6 though.

Here are some general guidelines that you should follow when building a deck with Hate Seeds and Firebringers:

• The deck should have as many HATL creatures as possible and as less events as possible, ideally it should be creature-only so that you can trigger Hate Seeds and Firebringers as fast as possible.
• Having a lot of creatures also helps with the early game because even if you have a hand full of Firebringers on turn 1 you are very likely to have something to play next turn and start collecting.
• These creatures mostly should be 3-4 cost. The reason is that you want to play as many creatures as possible but if they cost a lot of faeria that then it can take much more time.

Now let's look at cards that synergize well with Firebringer and Hate Seed.

• Demon Wrangler is one of the cheapest HATL creatures in the game but the best part about it is that it triggers Firebringers and Hate Seeds twice. Yes, when Demon Wing is summoned in place of the sacrificed creature it does trigger another time. Thanks to this Demon Wrangler can speed up buffing Firebringers and discounting Hate Seeds tremendously.
• It is worth to notice that Wind Soldier, unlike Flame Burst, is a 3 damage removal that triggers Firebringers and Hate Seeds. Neat!
• Same goes to Bomb Slinger. Cool!
• As you may remeber from Metashaker #2, Tale of the Old Turtle can be very effective in a creature-only deck with a lot of cheap creatures. Sounds like a Firebringer deck to me.
• Gabrian Commander, being a cheap HATL creature, triggers Hate Seeds. But at the same time Hate Seed, being a 7 cost creature, triggers Gabrian Commanders. And Gabrian Archons as well. Sounds like a BR Sevens deck to me.
• Fully discounted Hate Seeds are 0 cost creatures meaning that they can buff Illusions of Grandeur. And the best part about it is that you can use faeria saved up by playing Hate Seed to summon a big bad 7 cost Illusion.
• Using Altar of Souls you can buff Firebringers infinitely. Or rather, until you die.
• Twinsoul Spirit summons another Spirit and both are HATL creatures meaning that this single card triggers Firebringers and Hate Seeds twice just like Demon Wrangler. Although it's quite a challenge to build a 3 color deck.

Finally, let's look closely at Firebringer and Hate Seed and try to understand their differences. At first look they seem very similar: an unplayable early creature that becomes very efficient late game. However, they are still very different and, in my view, fit different deck archetypes.

Hate Seed eventually becomes a 0 cost creature and it means that in a single turn you can play both Hate Seed and something else, for example, kill an enemy creature with Bomb Slinger. You could not do this if you had a Firebringer instead of Hate Seed. This ability to clear a board and still be able to play a creature to continue pressuring your opponent is what tempo decks usually have. The best example is YEvents. Imagine your opponent only has Windstorm Charger on board and on his turn he uses Soul Drain to finish off one of your creatures, uses Flash Wind on Windstorm Charger killing your big dude and double collecting at the same time and then drops a Windstorm Colossus at your face. Your board is cleared and you are at 3 turn clock. Now you have to defend and your opponent keeps clearing your creatures and applying even more pressure. Thanks to cheap events and mobility YEvents can trade efficiently and use saved up faeria to play another creature. Similarly, you can use faeria to clear the board and then drop a Hate Seed to apply pressure. Hate Seed is a good card for tempo decks.

Now if we compare Windstorm Colossus and Firebringer it may seem like Firebringer is more similar to Colossus than Hate Seed is: one is 4 cost that can grow to 7/7, another one is a 5 cost 7/7. The difference is that Windstorm Colossus is yellow and Firebringer is red. YEvents has a lot of cheap tools for efficient trades. On the other hand, red doesn't have any mobility and has to rely on effective yet expensive removals like Flame Burst, Groundshaker and Firestorm. Red doesn't have cheap ways to clear the board and most of the time it doesn't have spare faeria to summon a creature after clearing the board. It only has this opportunity if the opponent has to pass his turn because he has nothing to play. And this brings us to control decks.

Control is a type of deck that unlike tempo doesn't rush towards opponent orb applying pressure. Control plays a slow game and wins by collecting more faeria than its opponent and denying the opponent collection as much as possible. It invests all faeria into clearing the board while harvesting with an efficient cheap creature and when the faeria advantage becomes big enough it can drop a big threat to finish the game. This is where Firebringer comes into play. This creature grows bigger as the game progresses and becomes a very big threat late game to help you finish the game. It seems like Firebringer may fit control decks nicely.

Although Firebringer and Hate Seed seem very similar, they fit different deck archetypes. However, it doesn't mean that you can only play Firebringer in a control deck and cannot do this in other decks. It means that it can be a good idea to determine what your deck needs, what it's win condition and how it can accomplish it before deciding whether to add Firebringer or Hate Seed to your deck.

I hope it makes sense, if I am wrong please comment and tell me your opinion. Ooh, it's been a long wall of text, time to look at Metashaker winners' decks!

Metashaker #3 results

Triumvirate

Triumverate made by Ramora is a deck full of synergies. It is a creature-only deck with Tale of the Old Turtle making it easy and reliable to trigger Hate Seeds and Firebringers. On the same time discounted creatures drawn with Tale and also Hate Seeds buff Illusions of Grandeur. For this unique idea Ramora recieves 5000 gold, very well done!

RY Control

This deck made by Konsl, although it seems pretty straightforward, is a very well-built deck. It has just the right amount of creatures to buff Firebringers without cutting to many removal spells from the deck and it has the tools to trade its creatures efficiently. For this refined and fine-tuned deck Konsl receives 2500 gold!

A Tale of Hatred and Fire

A Tale of Hatred and Fire made by LightSapfier is another BR deck with Tale that features cheap yet very efficient and powerful creatures. Its power is not entirely put on its late game finishers Firebringer and Hate Seed but it deal with opponent using it's regular creatures. For this solid approach LightSapfier recieves 1000 gold, good job!

Honorable mentions

You may like this Firebringer Wishes Twinsouls deck made by Jungwoo, it looks very fun. This RY Rush made by Chrunox is a YRush deck that features some Firebringers and Flame Bursts to help you finish off your opponent (althoug for my personal tast I'd use Hate Seeds instead). Angry Bargainer deck made by OmicronBob is a nice attempt to make a bargain deck with Hate Seed synergy. And finally, Fires and Flames from Hell made by LordBaloo. Warning: this deck is hot as hell!

That's it!

Thank you everyone for sharing your awesome ideas! Watch Luuu90's Metashaker #3 deck submissions review to take a look at some other submissions as well and to know what he thinks about them.

See you later! Check the news on the Hub or offical Faeria discord #tournaments channel for Metashaker deckbuilding contest #4!