Dodging removal all day with Lyra Festival (Fen & Crowbar) [Standard]

This is the Lyra Festival deck I brought to the AQZ Championship on 2025-03-20, where it went 5-1 for 4th of 91. The list was modeled after Nate1DeGreat1’s, which I found more effective than the spell-bounce list I had been testing.

Notes

I like that this list can threaten an expedition win in addition to a Lyra Festival win. This is primarily due to the ease with which the deck can anchor characters for continuous threats. Plus, if your opponent ever feels pressured to remove the Festival itself, you can often 2-0.

While Festival decks out of Lyra can absolutely win through removal, I’d consider it a poor meta choice with Yzmir as prevalent as it currently is. Afanas can pass priority, then efficiently remove your Aloe Vera (F)s and Festival characters with Off You Go! (C). Many decks are running spell-bounce uniques, so they’ll be able to reliably loop their removal and threaten to replay it whenever you attempt to Festival.

Sometimes you can afford to play it safe with your Festival, but other times, your best chance to win is to run it out and pray your opponent doesn’t have the answer. Pay attention to whether your opponent is playing as though they have removal or are digging to find it. In R1, I could afford to slow-roll the Festival and abort if needed if my opponent. In R5, my opponent was resupplying like crazy, and I probably had the best chance to win by betting that they didn’t have interaction right then and there.

Always keep Festival from the opening hand. It’s too big of a risk that the others get put into mana or are at the bottom of your deck.

Play Lyra Festival (R) as soon as you can, as long as you can get some kind of value from it. Once it’s on board, it’s a constant threat. If your opponent removes it, you’re almost always coming out ahead on the exchange after taking account the value you got from its arrow ability.

With the above list, I most often found myself digging for ways to anchor. That could make it worth spending unique slots on anchorers or going up on Icebound Taiga (F)s.

Card choices

• Lyra Festival (R): The rare is critical. It makes a world of difference to be able to play your Festival while affecting the board, either to anchor one of your characters or sleep an opponent’s character and deny them a progression.
• Aloe Vera (F): This is the most important character in the deck. When I was able to stick one, the deck could reliably keep it out for several more days. The additional flow of resupplies makes it much easier to assemble the Festival win.
• Nyala, Gifted Conjurer (R)/Sleight of Hand (C): I should probably be running more of these. Swapping support abilities or Dr. Frankenstein (F) into reserve and getting The Sandman (C) into hand is very useful. It can put Kodama (F) into reserve if you need a way to anchor or get it back to hand if you need an asleep character. It’s nice that Nyala is a character herself if played on the Festival day. I’ve found the exhausted resupply from Nyala (R) very welcome, as it helps dig for your combo pieces.
• Dr. Frankenstein (F): This works great specifically with the rare Lyra Festival (R) and ends up being a pretty powerful tempo play. For 2 mana, you get another character and can apply whichever Festival condition you’re lacking. In Beyond the Gates, it wasn’t great if this got stuck in hand instead of resupplied, but Sleight of Hand and Nyala, Gifted Conjurer can now swap him into reserve if needed.
• Icebound Taiga (F): In addition to providing an anchored character, this lets you effectively bank mana/actions if you can time it so that it gets its third counter on the turn when you’re planning to Festival. The upside is high enough for this to be a 2-of, but I’m somewhat concerned about drawing it at the wrong time.
• Silent Night (C): This can keep an Aloe Vera (F) out - you don’t particularly care if it’s asleep or anchored - and cheaply apply a Festival condition as long as you can use Lyra Festival (R) or Dr. Frankenstein (F) to reliably fulfill the other condition. You might be able to go to 2 copies, but it’s much worse to have too many of these than too few.
• A Cappella Training (C): I’m not certain this should be a 3-of. Most of the time, the fleeting condition for Festival came naturally, but it was often useful to pass priority or deny my opponent resources to make it more costly for them to hold onto disruption.
• Studious Disciple (F)/Paper Herald (F): 1-mana characters make your Festival day much easier. I think I preferred Studious Disciple (F) to let me take more actions on my Festival day, but I could see Paper Herald (F) being useful to generate a character for 0 mana.

Uniques

The best Festival uniques are probably low-cost uniques with an arrow ability to give a character asleep or anchored, ideally of your choice. I don’t have any that fit the bill, but mine are plenty powerful as well.

Card advantage uniques let you find combo pieces and make it easier to pull off the Festival win.

At-dusk fleeting-givers are even better than usual here: you’re running a maximum of ways to anchor and sleep characters, so you can often keep them around across multiple days. Additionally, if you deprive your opponent of cards to play, it can slow them down, which gives you more time to Festival and/or force them to decide between keeping disruption or plays to the board.

Studious Disciple: 6/7

Cernunnos: 6/7

Giving fleeting to all of your opponent’s characters can put your opponent way behind on resources if timed right. This is a 3-drop, so if you manage to anchor it with a support ability, you can completely starve them of characters to play.

The fact that this is a well-statted 3-drop makes it an incredible D1 play, getting you a 1-1 or 1-2 while preventing one or two characters from hitting reserve. 4 is slightly expensive on the back-end, but you can always use the desirable support ability to return a card from reserve to your hand.

Lyra Cloth-Dancer: 5/7

This unique is strong by virtue of its at-dusk ability. The downside is that it’s very underwhelming for its statline from hand unless you’re paying 4 for it, which makes it even worse against removal like Off You Go!.

Still, its cost of 2 from reserve is very efficient, and its strong support ability means you can get a ton of value out of it even the at-dusk ability isn’t relevant on the current board.

The games

Featured games: Round 5, Round 6

Round 1 (W): Kojo & Booda

• Festival win on D5, behind 3/2 on expeditions.

• I led with D1 Kodama (F) into D2 Aloe Vera (F). The timing works out so that the Kodama hits reserve just in time to reanchor the Aloe Vera.
• My opponent ramped into The Magic Sleigh (F) on their Booda day, which meant I fell behind 6/3 by D2.
• Twinkle Twinkle (C) on their Mighty Jinn (R) let me 2-0 while denying them a card.
• Lyra Festival (F) kept my Aloe Vera (F) anchored for a third day in a row.
• Paper Herald (F), Studious Disciple (F), and Sleight of Hand (C) let me pass priority long enough that I could have prevented an 0-2 if my opponent ended up being able to disrupt my Festival win.

Round 2 (W): Fen & Crowbar

• Festival win on D5, behind 5/4 on expeditions but with a massive board advantage.

• My opponent led with a D1 Magical Training (F). I responded with A Cappella Training (C) as an after-you, which let my Paper Herald (F) win an expedition. I’m now thinking I should have played the Paper Herald out first rather than let my opponent know I had access to A Cappella Training. If they had followed up with an Ouroboros Inkcaster (R) or Hathor (C) only for me to give it fleeting, I would have put them way behind on resources.
• I got an early Aloe Vera (F) down on D2 and a second one on D3. Sleight of Hand (C) swapping The Hatter (C) into reserve let me reanchor the first. Both stayed anchored for the rest of the game.
• My opponent’s Eat Me Energy Bars (R) stayed out for several days in a row alongside their own Aloe Vera (F), which blocked my pair of Aloe Veras very effectively.
• My opponent got very unlucky this game: two Cloth Cocoon (C)s went into mana from the opening hand, and an Off You Go! (F) got put into mana early due to Fen’s hero ability.

• Nyala, Gifted Conjurer (R) resupplying into The Sandman (C) and swapping with Dr. Frankenstein (F) from hand ensured I was resilient against character removal with two or more ways each to anchor or sleep something.

Round 3 (W): Afanas & Senka

• Festival win on D5, ahead 3/4 on expeditions.

• I ran out my Lyra Cloth-Dancer (U), double-boosted, on D2 after resupplying into The Hatter (C). I figured that it could be game-winning if it stuck, and even in the scenario where it didn’t, the best I could do is to force an Off You Go! (C) before the Festival turn.
• My opponent didn’t draw any of their Off You Go! (C)s, and the Cloth-Dancer stayed out all game, disincentivizing character plays.
• My mid-game was light on draw, so on each of D3 and D4, I played Lyra Festival (R) to reanchor the Cloth-Dancer (U).
• I was able to Festival through a sabotage. Sleight of Hand (C) and Kodama (F) in hand ensured that I could achieve asleep or anchored depending on my opponent’s sabotage choice.
• This is typically an abysmal matchup for Festival. Particularly with the way this game relied on a reanchor plan, I likely would have lost to a single Off You Go! (C).

Round 4 (W): Sigismar & Wingspan

• Festival win on D4, hopelessly behind 7/3 on expeditions with a Grand Endeavor (R) in play.

• Once again, I got lucky that my opponent failed to draw their removal.
• Studious Disciple (U) provided critical early-game card advantage.
• My opponent tapped out for their powerful albeit expensive uniques and Grand Endeavor (R), which let me confidently set up for my Festival turn.
• In the screenshot above, I used Lyra Festival to sleep the lone Ordis Trooper (R). Had I noticed that sleeping the Kadigiran Alchemist (U) would have prevented a progression as well, I would have slept it so that it didn’t hit reserve, depriving my opponent of a priority-passing 1-drop if I were to go for a Festival win on the following day. Alternatively, Aloe Vera (R) would have gone 1-1 and kept a character out but would likely have postponed Festival by a day. I chose to sleep instead of anchor with the Festival because I wanted the Kodama (F) to go to reserve for its support ability and the Studious Disciple (F) to go to reserve as a fleeting 1-drop.
• I had one mana spare on the following day thanks to drawing into a Martengale (C), so neither Studious Disciple (F)’s 1-cost nor spell cost-reduction were relevant. Its 1-cost did, however, give me the peace of mind that drawing/resupplying into a 2-drop or cost-reduction support ability expanded my outs to win.

Round 5 (L): Teija & Nauraa

• Loss after Lyra Festival was discarded, 1 expedition from victory.

My opponent and I traded expeditions for the first four days. Their start wasn’t especially aggressive, so I was able to get down Lyra Festival on D3.

In the position above, playing the Martengale (C) and anchoring it with the Festival ensures that you’ll start next day with a character on board and a 2-drop and anchor support ability in reserve after letting the Cernunnos (U) overflow. With the Twinkle Twinkle (C) in hand, all I needed to be in Festival position was to (1) draw or resupply into a character costing 3 or less or (2) draw into a character costing 4 or less and resupply into a cost-reduction support ability.

The winning Festival sequence goes all-in on the opponent hand having no interaction whatsoever, which might be part of why I missed it in-game. Lead with Dr. Frankenstein (F), use Twinkle Twinkle (C) to put a character to sleep, spend both Twinkle Twinkle (C) support abilities to play the Anansi (C) for free, then use the Kodama (R) support ability to anchor a character.

Instead, I conservatively led with the Anansi (C) and played the Dr. Frankenstein from reserve. Since my opponent needed to play around Festival (and was digging for removal as a result), this line traded expeditions while also setting up a guaranteed Festival opportunity next turn.

My opponent’s Floral Tent (C) resupplied into Lost in the Woods (C), so I immediately played Dr. Frankenstein (F) while I could still get the permanent trigger, hoping to pivot to winning on expeditions.

In order to secure a 2-0 and put myself at 1/3, I slept my opponent’s Yong-Su, Verdant Weaver (U) that gives two boosts whenever a character enters. I didn’t think through the fact that this would make getting the final progression near-impossible. I’m not sure I had a choice, however, since my opponent would be able to anchor it with a support ability anyway.

I couldn’t match their anchored and boosted stats on that day or the next.

Round 6 (W): Kojo & Booda

• Festival win on D7, behind 2/1 on expeditions and was going to lose that day.

I drew both Festivals in the opening hand. I felt compelled to keep them in case of a Mana Eruption (R). This was easier than it would have been had I not had Cernunnos (U) as a powerful D1 play.

Cernunnos (U)’s stats made my opponent work for their 2-1 even with Booda, all while giving fleeting to their Fire Rabbit (C) and Chiron (C).

I resupplied into a lucky The Hatter (C), so I replayed Cernunnos (U) and anchored it. This forced out a D2 Mana Eruption (R) from my opponent, or else they would lose their card draw Tooth Fairy (U) and whatever they’d end up playing on the following day.

Their Tooth Fairy (U) hit the Aloe Vera (F) I resupplied into, which would have given me a huge advantage. Instead, I deployed the Lyra Festival (R), sleeping Booda to turn a 0-2 into an 0-1.

Behind 6/3, I played a self-anchoring Dr. Frankenstein (U) to 1-1 while my opponent drew with their Bravos Trailblazer (U).

Twinkle Twinkle (C) let me 1-0, but had I targeted my opponent’s Tiny Jinn (R), I could have kept my opponent down a mana with much fewer stats on board. The tradeoff was letting their Physical Training (R)-ed Axiom Salvager (U) hit reserve or spending an A Cappella Training (C) which could possibly help me pass priority in order to Festival.

I didn’t draw into a way to anchor or sleep something, so I had to keep my opponent to 1 expedition max. My Anansi (C) ate an Intimidation (C) - one fewer Festival disruption piece - and a surprise double Martengale (C) cost-reduction let me play a second Lyra Festival (R) to sleep their triple-boosted Haven Bouncer (C) and 1-1.

I didn’t have a way to sleep something at the beginning of the afternoon, but my Studious Disciple (U) miraculously drew me into a Kodama (F). With another Kodama (F) in reserve and no interaction from my opponent, I was able to win with Festival on the day that my opponent’s expeditions would meet.