The most important thing to understand is how Pollution works. Your extremely powerful Spells all have the downside of placing Pollution Tokens into your Support Zones. These do not count as Creatures and don't have HP either, so they are fairly hard to get rid of. You can remove them with effects like The Yeeting, which just remove any non-Hero card on the board, and the deck also runs several cards with the specific purpose of getting rid of Pollution.

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But what do the Tokens actually do?

3 things:

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- Clog up a Support Zone.

Note that, if you don't have enough free Support Zones to place the Pollution Tokens required by a Spell, you simply cannot activate that Spell!

 

- Reduce your max hand size by 1, to a minimum of 1

 

- Force you to delete down for hand size immediately if you are ever above that limit.

 

That last one is by far the harshest penalty, as it will force you to delete cards from your hands constantly if you draw too many with cards like Wheels. However, luckily, this harshest restriction can also be negated by the Area Spell Big Gwen. You will always want to have the Area out before you cast any of your most costly Pollution Spells, unless your hand is as good as empty anyway so you wouldn't lose many cards. As such, the deck play Cooldin as one of its 2 dedicated supporters. He not only contributes the best support Abilities in Leadership and Alchemy, but also lets you bring out an Area straight from your deck at the end of your turn.

You always want to go first for that reason. Even though you can't really do much turn 1, because your Spells all either damage the opponent in some way (which doesn't work turn 1 going first), or would interact with Pollution already on the board, getting out the Area with Cooldin turn 1 so the Pollution you start generating turn 2 doesn't break your neck is vital.

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Of course, even if you don't go first, you can still play. You'll just have to potentially forgo your Action on your first turn, or use a lower-power Spell that generates less Pollution, or just accept that you'll lose some cards to the Pollution.

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Once the Area is established, you can start throwing out huge Spells aggressively and just have to be mindful of deleting cards at the end of your turn. At that point, you can actually use the several ways your deck offers you to get rid of Pollution to counterbalance the Pollution you produce.

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How do you do that?

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First, your main Hero, Victorica, can once per turn just remove a Pollution not placed that turn. Victorica is also able to use any Spell that produces Pollution as if it was 1 level lower thanks to her unique Mana Mining Ability, and thanks to also starting with Wisdom as well, she actually gets to use any lv 2 or lower Spell that produces Pollution without ever having to attach an Ability, just for the cost of a single discard.

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Wisdom also gives the deck access to a few non-Pollution Spells, namely Divine Gift of Fire and Rain of Arrows. Both of these serve to support the relatively meager damage output the deck has in the mid to late game, one by applying 60 damage per turn Burns, the other by dealing AoE damage that scales with how many Creatures you control.

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Victorica's Abilities allow you to play a wide variety of Pollution Spells of all Spell Schools natively, giving the deck a lot of variety and utility, which is one of its 2 big upsides.

The other upside is one very unique tool the deck has access to: Eraser Beam, a level 2 Spell that, for 3 Pollution, outright defeats a Hero in one blast, no questions asked!

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Eraser Beam is easily the best Spell you have access to and the main reason to pick up the deck. It allows you to cripple your opponent as early as turn 1 by taking out their most important supporter or main carry, and it doesn't care about HP at all, so even a 1400+ HP Night just crumbles to it. Eraser Beam doesn't even deal damage, so it also gets around anything that would prevent, negate or return damage back to sender. That is an upside in 95% of cases, but can also be a crippling downside in very rare cases, because some cards like the Ability Resistance specifically negate non-damage effects. Those are rare and can usually be played around though.

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Note that you only get a single Eraser Beam per game, so choose wisely which Hero you want to take out with it!

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Unfortunately, once the Eraser Beam has been used, the deck is relatively slow when it comes to damage, instead focusing on utility, keeping yourself alive, and chip damage. Your other damage sources are Pyroblast, which deals 100 damage to any number of targets for that much Pollution, Pollution Spewer, an Artifact Creature that once per turn deals 80 damage when you remove a Pollution Token, Pollution Piranha, a Creature you can only summon by removing a Pollution Token and that can deal 50 damage once per turn, and the 2 previously mentioned non-Pollution Spells that apply Burn and scaling spread damage. Pollution Piranha and Pollution Spewer can both be brought out without an Action, so in theory, you can load up relatively big Rains of Arrows to close out a game or at least get closer to winning. Once you have established a somewhat wide board, you can deal with the remaining Heroes within a few turns.

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Pollution Piranha is the only other way besides Victorica for you to remove your Pollution, so it could easily be a priority search target for you in many cases. It helps you increase your hand size limit again, free up Zones for new Pollution, and trigger Pollution Spewers once Victorica is defeated or otherwise incapacitated.

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And that's the deck. Bring out Big Gwen, eliminate the most important enemy Hero with an Eraser Beam early, and then balance between using powerful Spells and getting rid of your Pollution while also triggering Pollution Spewers for chip damage.

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The final Spell worth mentioning is your other potential ace in the hole, Magic Mirror, the only lv 3 Spell in the deck which requires you to attach additional Mana Mining to Victorica (or your other Heroes). Magic Mirror is a Surprise which negates a Spell that would hit (not just one that targets!) the user, negates it, then sends a copy of it back as if the user had cast it. This could even send back an opponent's Eraser Beam (but only if you have not used one yet that game, it doesn't get around the once per game restriction)!

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Your third Hero besides Victorica and Cooldin is Ingo, who just serves as your Gold supporter. Of the 3, he's the least important, but both Pollution Piranha and Pollution Spewer trigger his effect to grant you 4 Gold. Pollution Tokens do not, since they are not Creatures.

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When it comes to weaknesses, the deck has a few. First of all, losing the Area, Big Gwen, is devastating. Cooldin can bring out a new copy for free, but the deck only runs 2 copies total, so losing it a second time means it will be gone for good. Unless you are absolutely sure your opponent has no way to clear your Area, you should never discard or delete the second copy of it from your hand if you draw into it!

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Secondly, balancing your Pollution can be challenging. Eraser Beam leaves you with 3 immediately, Pyroblast gets you at least 2 for hitting 2 Heroes, potentially even more if you have to clear Creatures. And all your other varied utility or situational Spells also generate 1 or more Pollution, including Reactions and Surprises. The deck only contains 4 Pollution Piranhas, so you get to remove 4 Pollution Tokens for a profit over the entire course of the game. So if your opponent can keep your Victorica from once per turn removing a Token for you (defeat her, Freeze/Stun/negate her, use something like Divine Punishment to negate the activation of her effect...), you might find yourself in a situation where you can't really cast a Spell anymore.

On the other hand, some cards in the deck only work if you already have Pollution (like summoning the Pollution Piranhas or triggering Pollution Spewer). If you draw heavily into those cards early on, you will have a really slow start.

Generally speaking, if you can't find Eraser Beam early, you will have a much harder time keeping up with your opponent, because the deck overall is comparatively slow.