The Keyforge Tournament of Champions draws to a close. One hundred decks have been doing battle since our stream started a little over three months ago, and now only four remain.

Thank you to everyone who has watched and supported our streams over at our twitch page. Tune in tonight at 7:30EST for the Grand Finale!

The double elimination tournament bracket has progressed over the previous 8 streams to give us our last remaining decks. Two decks each in the winners bracket and losers bracket.

Cpl. “Barkus Rex” Kingsley

The Corporal generates unprecedented amounts of Aember. It has been known, on multiple occasions, to threaten a key the first turn when it is playing second. Treasure map is it’s favorite card to play when going first. It has a whopping TWENTY THREE Aember pips on cards, and many more of those cards have conditions to generate more or steal from the opponent.

Strange Gizmo is the cornerstone of the control in this deck. It creates a board state that is very complicated for the opponent to play in to. When threatening a key, if the opponent cannot stop you, anything they commit to the board will just be gone on their next turn. We have seen plenty of games where this essentially causes the opponents deck to skip a turn, or just discard a few cards from hand during their turn. Barkus makes particularly good use of this card since it is more concerned with Actions that generate Aember than holding a board presence.

K. Olly, Mageshire’s Crackling Desperado

K. Olly is the only deck left that is completely undefeated throughout the course of the entire tournament. It has shown itself to have just enough control and resiliency to be able to hang with any other deck. It’s shadows has tons of one-off stealing between two Relentless Whispers, two Finishing Blow, and the Faygin double Urchin combo.

Soul snatcher is uniquely powerful in this deck. It can usually play it to much better value than the opponent because of it’s shadows events and the value of it’s Dis creatures. The removal of the double Hysteria and a Grasping Vines can shut down opponents creatures or entire boards without triggering soul snatcher for them. The shadows events can cleanly kill your own creatures to generate aember and steal from the opponent. One play in particular involved using relentless whispers on it’s own Dust Imp, Generating four Aember and stealing one from the opponent. 5 Aember from a single play!

Sov Wornvector Parmesan

With three Control The Weak, Mr. Parmesan is one of the most brutal decks to play against. This card can be used to guarantee the forging of a key or to basically skip the opponents next turn based on what they last played. The Dis creatures are all a problem for the opponent to deal with, and the creeping oblivion gives it a good game against combo decks. This was the last deck in even the top 8 of the tournament to have either Sanctum or Mars. The martians fly in on the back of two Battle Fleets creating huge turns. Soft Landing into Uxlyx the Zookeeper with a Squaker in hand is one of the most brutal plays an opponent can experience.

Epic Quest provides this deck with inevitability. After forging the first two keys, it can just stop caring about generating aember, and start building toward that final Sanctum turn to close out the game. Battle fleet filling up the hand or Zyzzix the Many archiving your knights helps assure a quest of epic proportions.

Deadclaw “Lion” Osteotense

At first glance this deck doesn’t look particularly special, but something about it just clicks when it is on the board. Most notably, the Untamed side contains two Mavericks, Ganymede Archivist and Blinding Light. Key Charge can be used to close out the game, or negate the opponents Aember control for a key forging. Deadclaw hits particularly hard with it’s Brobnar. With it’s two Smaaash and a Bumpsy, Wardrummer can create some amazing turns. The logos is just a pile of efficiency. Neutron Shark takes down problem creatures or artifacts that the Brobnar isn’t able to deal with.

Canon just works so well with the rest of this deck. It allows Brobnar to deal with those elusive Shadows and Mars creatures. As long as the opponent relies on a board presence to win the game, Deadclaw can keep pounding them into a hole until the war of attrition is won.

Which Archon has what it takes to destroy all the others and cement it’s place in the Crucible? I, for one, can’t wait to find out.