Just Add Bacon’s Skyweaver Meta Breakdown, 4/13/2022

This report marks another instance of a single prism dominating S tier, although it’s not the first time. The February report had an almost prism-dominant meta (Banjo Zam was the only exception from an otherwise Heart meta) and last January featured a Wisdom-dominant RPS meta. Here however, we’ve collapsed in with no representative for any beatdown focused archetype, and instead have roughly two versions of the same idea. Additionally, given the more favorable meta, Iris has climbed substantially from A tier. 

To understand the exhaust archetype, I think it’s most important to understand how archetypes interact in Skyweaver, and how exhaust manages to work this into a win condition. In Skyweaver, I recognize 5 distinct archetypes. Archetypes can be thought of as focuses of a deck, and are always built around some win condition. Aggro is the simplest of these. Aggro simply tries to race its opponent for lethal, usually competing with them on basic fundamentals like board control and tempo. Traditional Aggro decks generally place at least a moderate emphasis on units, with units being the main tool for generating damage and advancing the win condition. 

Burn is the second archetype I recognize, and I call it distinct from aggro for a few reasons. First, because of the hero attack and ood damage, burn generally has a winning match up against aggro. For the purposes of understanding decks and the meta, this distinction is quite useful. Secondly, Burn places less emphasis on board control than your traditional Aggro deck. Burn aims to race the opponent at a faster rate than Aggro, but generally at the expense of card advantage. It also runs more specialized damage spells, generally for doing direct damage to the hero. It may be more explosive than Aggro, but having less units also means its damage is not generally as sustained. 

Midrange exists on the opposite end of Aggro from burn, as it goes heavier into its units. Midrange plays a slightly slower game than Aggro, but what it loses in speed it makes up for in card value. More expensive midrange units with better stats tend to have resistance to tempo efficient removal, and can also trade well versus Aggro’s units. Powerful finishers such as {{Pharonis}} or {{Enigma Golem}} may be employed, but these are generally the last resorts of the midrange deck. Consequently, midrange aims to slow down games against burn and aggro, since its odds of winning are greater as the game goes on.
While Aggro and Burn are generally beatdown focused archetypes, and Midrange will change based on its opponent, Control is our first primarily defensive strategy. Control decks run strong defensive tools and reliable removal to control board versus aggro. Control decks especially love to run aoe (area of effect) spells. For a Control deck, the win condition is usually either sheer card advantage, or expensive finisher cards, such as Fireball or Titanic. A Control deck works by slowing down its opponent until the game is in a later state, where the Control player can take advantage of more powerful effects. Against all archetypes except Combo, a Control deck’s win condition is to simply stall the game.  

Combo is our final archetype, and its win condition is always some deck-specific combination of cards. It may be an OTK (One Turn Kill) deck, such as with Banjo {{Zam}} or Iris Lion Combo, or it may be a combo that aims to snowball, such as NakaMask. An important distinction is that a combo deck is not any deck that utilizes a powerful combo or buildaround, such as Mira Will. Rather, it must be the case that the deck does not have a win condition if the card is not played. For Zam decks with 7 units this is generally the case. For a Mira list with 15, this is not. Combo decks tend to thrive against Control decks, since the slow Control decks give the Combo player plenty of time to set up. Conversely, they tend to need to be careful versus aggressive decks like Burn and Aggro, since combo pieces are functionally dead cards, and represent a disadvantage in those matches. 

With all of this stated, we can now understand how Exhaust decks work. Exhaust is a Skyweaver variation of the Control deck, in which the win condition is either an ood war, or the threat of an ood war. But how does this work as a win condition? In all exhaust decks, take as a given that exhaust has a better draw engine than the competing deck 

• Burn: When burn runs out of direct damage, exhaust can stabilize through healing. Given that it reaches this point, burn’s lower number of units makes it easy for exhaust to deplete it of resources. Exhaust wins through card quantity and quality. 
• Aggro: Exhaust here has the same wincondition as the traditional control deck. However, the lack of finishers decreases the odds of dead draws versus the aggro deck, helping improve the matchup. Aggro runs out of resources, and Exhaust wins through card quantity and quality
• Midrange: Exhaust runs reliable and versatile removal options. Given that the units can be answered, Midrange is too slow to be able to threaten exhaust before its most powerful tools come online. Midrange runs out of resources, and Exhaust wins on card quantity and quality. 
• Combo: Currently there is no infinite damage combo in Skyweaver. As long as the damage is finite, it is possible for Exhaust to outheal the damage of the OTK combo. If Combo fails to win with their combo, they essentially lose the game by default. 

The above understanding of archetypes and matchups help explain why Exhaust has emerged in Titus and Axel as opposed to a hero like Iris or Banjo. All Wisdom decks have access to the key cards for Exhaust builds: {{Prismata}}, {{Arcadeum Mask}}, and {{Ponderous}}. But, Strength and Heart provide better support for the strategy than Agility or Intelligence. Heart provides valuable and prolonged healing options ({{Vishiva}}, {{Avatar of Light}}), which pair nicely with Wisdom’s bursts of healing ({{Gift of Aya}}, {{Jakintsu}}). On the other end of the support spectrum, Strength provides useful removal tools such as {{Sunder}}, {{Chomp}}, and {{Kha’s Wrath}}, which help it better deal with decks such as burn. Its healing is not as strong, but it also generally needs less healing. 

In either case, the importance of powerful removal tools to the viability of exhaust can not be overstated. Exhaust quickly falls apart if its opponent maintains board control. This is not often a problem however, as options such as {{Whisk Away}}, {{Thanite}}, and {{Seal of Doom}} can cover a myriad of threats. While the nerfs to previous powerhouses like {{Touch the Sky}} and {{Doomsday}} have left wisdom fewer tools to answer boards well, the tools it still has are quite potent. 

Finally, we also have Iris Lion Combo, ascending through the ranks thanks to the advantages of a more favorable meta. There’s not much new to say about the deck, other than just highlighting that combo decks naturally benefit from a meta with little pressure from aggro. Some aggressive decks may perhaps pressure it, such as Fox Burn or Titus Aggro, but defensive tools like {{Incinerate}} and {{Mr Whiskers}}, mana manipulation cards such as {{Cloud Sloth}}, {{Head in the Clouds}}, and {{Take Root}}, and strong aoe effects like {{Flame Noble}} and {{Maelstrom}} give the deck numerous answers to aggro. Assuming that Exhaust decks are nerfed in the coming patch, I expect Iris to fall back down as aggro returns to the meta.