Morte
Morte has 2 copies of each of the following cards :
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| Mark: 3x Death |
| Creature Control: 12 Retrovirus, 6 Improved Plague |
| Permanent control: None |
Strategy:
This deck is very difficult to beat, but it is possible, with an aether deck, if you are lucky enough, you can deny him the quanta he needs to play miracles by lobtomizing or killing off his rays of light. However he will mainly poison you, and while scorpio is the queen of poison, morte is the king of it, using arsenics and deadly poisons to rack up poison very quickly, while plague (and retroviruses) act as a slow and painful creature control which eventually will kill your creatures to feed his bone walls, his condors, or just plainly give him skeletons to rip you apart.
Because Morte also has light in his deck, he can also bring in some quite hard hitters along with some rays of light needed to wear you down for a big attack. The light also serves another, even worse purpose though... even if you bring morte to a near-death condition, he has miracle in his deck, which can completely undo all that hard work you did. When Morte plays this its a VERY unpleasent experience (I've been killed many times due to this). Your best bet is a creature control deck combined with water, purifys will prevent the poison damage if any accumulates, while thunderbolts, fire storms or plagues will slowly kill the creatures. It won't guarantee it, but it may be a start.
Mono aether as said can win against morte but the chances of winning are low due to poison that seeps right through your shields. Once 9+ poison counters are on you, you've basically had it. Gravity has no chance, while the otyughs can eat the retro viruses, by the time you can get one out, there will be 2 or 3 of them poisoning you, in essence killing your chances, plus theres no permanent control for his arsenic so you will slowly die of poison. Poison decks have no hope either, too many hard hitters, vultures, and poison cards mean you will only delay the inevitable with purify and shields. Same for fire, time, earth and light. Darkness has a low chance due to poison, BUT, they have those all important vampires, steals and drain lifes. Playing your eclipse (or nightfalls) though will hinder you more than help you, as he will kill your creatures if you have too many, or if he has a retrovirus on the field. The parasites however can prove invaluable, as can the dusk mantle, potentially buying you enough time to prevent his hard hitters from hitting you too hard while healing you at the same time. Without a doubt the best deck for countering this is the rainbow control, Versatility will save you more times than not, sancts for healing, dim shields for blocking off damage, sundials for stopping creatures, pulvies for the arsenics or boneyards, Eagle eyes and flayers for creature control. Rainbow control decks have a high chance, ideally you want a good draw and him to have a bad one, but even with a not as good start you could still beat him provided you get hourglasses and pillars quickly.
OTKs can win if they can get their combo in before the poison that gets around their defenses kills them. Speed helps a lot, as does healing.
Morte can be a very annoying FG with a Hope deck, where an early Electrocutor can help a lot. Luckily, you can bait his Retrovirii with one RoL at a time if he has something played that will benefit from it and the plagues with two at a time (several plagues in one turn as well). You can also play your RoL's with reckless abandon, since he uses them as well. The main problem is the poison, so stopping his Arsenics with Hope is high priority. If you have six SoG's or sancts, you can heal as much as his poison from Deadly Poison can do, and you will want to lobotomise his Rays of Light so that he does not gain any light quanta to play his Miracle with. You can still beat him down even if he does, however, but the plagues slow this process down considerably. Therefore, you will usually want to bet everything on one played rush. Having Archangels or SoPs instead of Light Dragons helps.
Oracle Counter
Don’t start chaining Sundials/Shields until you’re at about 50hp, then watch your HP and and use Purifies accordingly. Use Nymph’s Tears on your Air Pendulums and Quint it if you can. Otherwise, play it when Morte doesn’t have any Retroviruses, and then blow up one Unstable Gas to kill the Retrovirus (Blue Nymph can take 1 hit from an UG). Once you have 10 UGs, blow them up for the win.
Recommended decks
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4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 5ia 5ia 5ia 5ia 5ig 5ig 5ig 5pu 5pu 5pu 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 621 621 8ps
Alternatively, just using Dim Shields with healing works well.
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