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Dance of the Butterflies

Type: Spells!

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Play Style: Setup

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Difficulty: Medium

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Consistency: 3/5

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Power: 4/5

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Recovery: 1/5

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Protection: 4/5

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Versatility: 4/5

Let your opponent try all they want to set up their board and follow their win condition, or whatever. You - you dance! Let Beato, the Butterfly Witch use a variety of Spells to prepare her for Ascension, then turn her into Beato, the Eternal Butterfly. In this form, she becomes capable of any and all Spells in the game - so casually throw whatever high-level nukes you want towards your opponent!

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For this deck, the question isn't whether or not you can "win the game" - it's whether or not you can Ascend your Beato. Until you do, you're necessarily very defensive, just protecting her and trying to get her Ascension ready.

But once she's Ascended - your dance becomes very deadly, throwing out the most giant Creatures in the game like it's nothing!

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Dance - and make make your opponent dance too, in the palm of your hand!

How to use the Deck

Beato the Butterfly Witch.png
Dangerous Knowledge.jpg
Beato the Eternal Butterfly.png
Embodiment of Biseria.jpg
Butterfly Cloud.jpg
Resuscitation Potion.png

You have only one goal in the early and mid game: Keep Beato alive until you can Ascend her! Or you could also say: Ascend Beato before your opponent can kill her.

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To do that, you have to use at least one Spell of each of the 5 Schools (Destruction, Decay, Magic Arts, Support, Summoning) with Beato, then play a Beato the Eternal Butterfly from your hand on top of her. Luckily, Beato in her basic form can already use all lv 1 Spells, regardless of their Spell School, so all you have to do is find one of each Spell School and use it, no Abilities required.

5 Spells are still a lot, of course. If you just used normal Spells, it'd take 5 Actions, which could take 5 turns to pull off!

The deck uses 2 "tricks" to accelerate this process: For one, not all Spells are normal. It uses Reactions and Surprises you can use without an Action, reducing the time needed a lot. And for another, the deck uses Double Spells, Spells with more than 1 Spell School. Beato can use all lv 1 Spells, even Double Spells! And since Double Spells have 2 Spell Schools, using them contributes both of them! The best example is Dangerous Knowledge: It's a Reaction that can be used at any time, not costing an Action, and it has 2 Spell Schools, so just playing it from your hand instantly clears Support Magic and Decay Magic off the list of required Spell Schools for the Ascension!

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Theoretically, you can clear Beato's Ascension condition in just 1 turn: Dangerous Knowledge ticks off Support and Decay Magic for free, Graveyard Gathering clears Magic Arts as an additional Action, and then you can spend your main Action to summon a Giant Exploding Skull, which not only contributes both Summoning and Destruction Magic, but also gives you a Creature nuke: You can use its effect next turn to remove all Creatures from the board, making it a threat many decks will have to answer, buying you time. Best of all: No part of this setup requires you to interfere with your opponent. You deal no damage, don't mess with their hand and so on. That means you can use all these cards on your first turn, theoretically getting you ready to Ascend by your second turn!

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However, that is the optimal setup. The best possible case. Since the deck has very limited consistency effects, instead opting to gather its pieces with raw draw power and only 4 Magnetic Gloves as tutor cards, you will likely have to play out at least 2 or 3 turns before you can Ascend Beato.

And you have to keep in mind: Ascending her, even after her condition has been fulfilled, can only be done before your Action Phase of the turn, and it will end your turn immediately, so even with the perfect setup, you can never Ascend turn 1 since you need the Action Phase for the setup.

Ascending does immediately give her 300 HP though, making it fairly hard for your opponent to instantly kill her in one turn.

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The big payoff for Ascending Beato is the Embodiment of Biseria, a giant lv 9 Creature that can be summoned by Ascended Beato like it's nothing and that will deal 300 damage per turn, very quickly overrunning the opponent's Heroes. Each Biseria also has 400 HP, making them very hard to clear!

Even if your opponent manages to finally get rid of your Ascended Beato, the Biserias she already summoned will be very hard to deal with. Let your opponent scramble to finally knock Beato out - it'll already be too late!

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When it comes to weaknesses, this deck is particularly susceptible to Dark Gear, an Artifact that can steal a Creature. While it will be extremely expensive to steal a Biseria (45 Gold), doing so can easily be a huge momentum swing.

And of course, the obvious: Beato only has 300 HP, she can be one-shotted by a lot of things in decks specializing on single-Hero damage. Butterfly Cloud makes her untargetable for a turn, but that costs your Action to use. The better option to protect her is Stealthy Pursuit, a powerful Reaction that can be used in conjunction with another Spell to make her, again, untargetable for a turn. But there is no way to make her immune to damage at all. AoE can still hit and potentially kill her, and if your opponent can somehow negate the Stealthy Pursuit, or you just don't find one, you will be wide open!

If Beato goes down early, you only have a single card that can save you the game: 1 copy of Resuscitation Potion in your Potion Deck. You do however not start with any Alchemy in play to access the Potion Deck, you'll need to find that first!

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Overall, to dance with the butterflies means to keep Beato alive. If you fail to do so ... you're in big trouble. While it's theoretically not impossible to win without Ascending her, and some Creature decks might even assemble boards large enough to drop the levels of Biserias in your hand to 0 by themselves, your chance to win is astronomically low without Ascending Beato!

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