The deck
Where my last Fen deck was a character-centric midrange deck, this build aims to be a spell-centric control deck.
The spells in question are the in-faction A Cappella Training (C) to starve the opponent of resources, joined by Yzmir imports Magical Training (F) and Off You Go! (F) to outcard your opponent and remove their strongest plays.
Abilities that return cards from reserve to hand are a high priority. They allow you to use your reserve as a toolbox to recycle the cards that matter most in the matchup, while also letting you rescue cards that are stronger from hand if they get resupplied from Fen’s hero ability.
Since you’ll usually have no shortage of cards between the card draw, recursion, and Fen resupplies, cost-reduction support abilities and mana ramp help you leverage your excess of resources.
Card choices
- Ouroboros Inkcaster (R): This card does everything. It gets a card of your choice back into hand, the support ability gives you mana to make use of your resource advantage, and it’s a 2-drop in a faction that’s lacking in strong 2 mana plays.
- Aloe Vera (F): This is a must-run for Fen regardless of how you build her. As a 3-drop, it’s a desirable target for any anchor support abilities whose resupply doubles down on Fen’s hero ability.
- Anansi (C): Reliably being a 3-mana 5/5/5 or 2-mana 4/4/4 is a core part of why Fen works in the first place. It’s even better in a spell-heavy build since you can cast a non-fleeting spell that hits reserve, and then play this out with an additional boost.
- Magical Training (F): The card advantage is helpful, but even better is the ability to after-you your opponent so that you can better enact your control gameplan.
- Off You Go! (F): This is another spell that gets much better when you can cast the front side multiple times.
- A Cappella Training (C): One of the ways this deck wins is by running your opponent out of plays by giving all of their characters fleeting. This can stonewall Treyst in the early turns if they can’t find ways to proactively get cards into their reserve.
- Mighty Jinn (F): One of the ways you can win matchups like the Yzmir one is to establish a mana advantage to strongarm yourself into the reactive role. Whether that’s worth the rare slot is debatable, especially since it’s another forest-mountain character. You’re thrilled when this gets resupplied early and you can play it for 3.
- Flamel (F): Both the front and back side work great in a spell-heavy deck, though I’ve found this can be more expensive than I’d like since the rest of the deck is heavy on 4-drops.
- Tinker Bell (F): I’d love to be able to use these rare slots elsewhere, but Fen really needs both strong 2-drops and strong sabotage.
- Hathor (C): The support ability is critical, though it can be awkward when it’s in reserve and you just need a solid character.
- The Hatter (C): This support ability is very powerful when lined up specifically with Anansi (C) or Aloe Vera (F). A downside of this spell-focused build is that there are few enough desirable targets that you won’t be able to line them up with the support ability as often as a build running 3-drops like Cernunnos (F).
- Cloth Cocoon (C): It’s possible that even two copies is too high, now that I’m seeing less Waru and fewer expensive permanents. Truthfully, it doesn’t even feel that great when I hit a Haven, Bravos Bastion with one of these.
- Tanuki (C): This one is on the edge, but the immediate sabotage is valuable, and the deck already has tools to get this back into hand from reserve.
Uniques
Coniferal Coneman: 5/7
At its base, this is a Flamel that also works from reserve, but you’ll land a massive advantage if you win the 50/50 to anchor it. I’ve won and lost games as a result of this die roll, which is very much in the Lyra spirit.
Kappa: 5/7
This is a very nicely statted 3-drop on the front, especially considering that it gets you a spell back from reserve. You’ll rarely want to play it from reserve for 5 mana, but fortunately you won’t need to, since you’re thrilled to spend the support ability to anchor a 3-drop.
The Sandman: 5/7
The front-side is a strict upgrade over The Sandman (R), boasting an extra point of water and the at-dusk trigger to return a spell to hand. What makes this one especially nice is its second mode to sleep itself as a delayed 3-mana 2/5/6 that returns two spells from reserve over the course of this turn and the next.
Takeaways
This spell-centric Fen build can be finicky. It feels incredible when all of the mini-synergies come together in the right sequence. However, it struggles when you draw your spells without your recursion (or vice-versa), when you see your anchor support abilities without your few premium 3-drops (or vice-versa), and when you see your ramp without your card advantage (or vice-versa).
This build runs extremely tight on rare slots. As a result, I believe this style of Fen will only grow more successful as the Lyra card pool expands. The deck would benefit most if Lyra were to get access to in-faction control spells to fill the role of Magical Training (F) and Off You Go! (F).
Decks that are heavy on a specific combination of biomes actually perform better in tiebreakers than a deck with a more balanced distribution.
The games
Round 1 (L): Sigismar & Wingspan
I started the game with an awkward hand that had me playing and replaying an Anansi (C) on T1 and T2 so as not to fall too far behind. An Ouroboros Inkcaster (R) with a spell-less hand returned a Hathor (C) to hand; Hathor (C) usually prefers to stay in reserve, but in this instance the cheap body was more important.
A window for a T3 Mighty Jinn (F) gave me a mana advantage that let me trade for the next several turns with sequences like a double Off You Go! (F) off a Hathor (C) support ability.
I drew all three of copies of The Hatter (C) over several turns, which I could at least leverage since my opponent was stuck in a forest-only region. Meanwhile, my opponent’s mid-game draws looked light on cheap characters, so they were priced into making defensive plays like Sticky Note Seals (C) on one of The Hatters and Banishing Gate (R) on my anchored Coniferal Coneman (U).
I had forest on lock but couldn’t effectively block in water, so we continued trading all the way down to the final turn. Cloth Cocoon (C) isn’t great against Sigismars that don’t play permanents, and seeing both copies of the spell meant the best I could do with it was to use it as all but an after-you by removing a fleeting Ordis Spy (C). I didn’t see another 3-drop past the early-game, so the best way I could set up for tiebreakers was to use a The Hatter support ability to anchor an Ouroboros Inkcaster (R) off of the resupply.
For tiebreakers, I drew + resupplied into a Mighty Jinn (F) and A Cappella Training (C). Alongside The Hatter (C), it was convenient that they both fought for forest and mountain. My opponent played out three 1-drops. I was massively ahead in forest and mountain, but Teamwork Training (C) with their last 2 mana took out The Hatter and put them just ahead on mountain - a Charge! (C) would have done the trick here too.
Round 2 (W): Afanas & Senka
I debated for a long time about whether to pair an A Cappella Training (C) or Martengale (C) with Tinker Bell (F) for a 1+2 start as the first player. My decision to go with the A Cappella Training would have been punished by a start of Kadigiran Mage-Dancer and a 1-mana spell. Fortunately their play was to trade with a Baba Yaga (R), which I was able to give fleeting.
Their T2 boost target was a Sneezer Shroom (F). I debated for a while whether to risk running out an anchored Aloe Vera (F) with my opponent on 2 mana, but ultimately played it safe by getting out a resupplied Ouroboros Trickster (C). It was hit with an Off You Go! (C), but I was happy to respond by taking out the Sneezer Shroom with a Cloth Cocoon (C) for no progress that day.
As the first player on T3, I prioritized sabotaging their Off You Go! (C) to set up an Aloe Vera window. This paid off, as their play for the turn was a Flamel (C) with no target left in reserve.
My Mighty Jinn (F) let a Studious Disciple (C) through in the mid-game, but gave me a critical mana advantage.
The following turn, after slow-rolling by putting their Kadigiran Mage-Dancer (C) to sleep, I ran out the Aloe Vera. I was relieved to find that they didn’t have the second removal spell.
The anchored Aloe Vera snowballed into a turn with a +4 and +3 Anansi. A Cloth Cocoon (C) for their anchored Spindle Harvesters (U) gave me the progression I needed to close out the game. Oddly enough, I was fine even if my opponent didn’t present a Cloth Cocoon target since I could have used Kappa (U)’s support ability to anchor one of their characters.
Fen typically struggles against Afanas, but this is how she can win: your opponent fails to draw their key spells and your fleeting/sabotage tools make it hard for them to line up the spells they do have with boost targets.
Round 3 (L): Treyst & Rossum
Another awkward, spell-less hand had me keep an Anansi (C) as a T1 play. Fortunately, I was on the draw, so I could play it diagonal to my opponent’s Kelon Elemental (C) and threaten to beat the Yzmir Stargazer (F) they reserved.
I was fortunate that my opponent didn’t see any copies of Haven, Bravos Bastion (F) through the early game. To capitalize on this, I prioritized preventing as many things as possible from going into their reserve. I took an entire turn off to A Cappella Training (C) an Axiom Salvager (R), then discard their Dr. Frankenstein (C) with a Twinkle, Twinkle (C) followed by a Cloth Cocoon (C) off the back of the Twinkle, Twinkle support ability.
I hadn’t made much progress myself, but I kept them low on scrap counters and even forced them to forgo putting a card into mana on one turn.
Some of the awkwardness of the deck shone through in the game, as I had to juggle wanting to play an Anansi (C) for expedition progress against wanting to play The Hatter (C) before the Anansi to set up an anchored play, or wanting - before any of that - to ramp with a Mighty Jinn (F).
The critical turn came the turn after they got down their first Haven. They had one card in hand, a Foundry Armorer (C) in reserve, and four scrap counters. My mana costs and sequencing were fairly awkward, and I could only make two plays, with most combinations wasting some of my 8 mana:
- Play a +3 Anansi (C) from hand and give it anchored
- Cloth Cocoon (C) their Haven as the first player
- Play a resupplied Tinker Bell (F) to sabotage their Foundry Armorer in reserve but immediately give them their final scrap counter
- Ramp with Mighty Jinn (F)
I opted to hit their Haven first, then anchor out the Anansi. This turned out extraordinarly poorly for me, as they drew into a replacement Haven off their now-online hero ability, and their final card in hand was a Kelon Burst (C) for the Anansi.
With no knowledge of their hand, I think hoping to dodge Kelon Burst with the Anansi play is still what it takes for me to win the game. Cloth Cocoon is absoutely the wrong play, since I’m not favored if the game goes long; I want both of my plays to fight for expeditions. Tinker Bell is likely the way to go since my opponent was choked on cards and needed their last card and/or top-deck to be Ada Lovelace (R), Dr. Frankenstein, or Axiom Salvager to keep the cycle going.
My opponent ended up finding their third Haven on the next turn, and despite having a solid turn myself, I fell short of being able to block both sides by my opponent’s last character.