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Written By - Thomas NeilsonMay 5th, 2024
Legions Realms At War currently has 17 different warlords, and even more archetypes, competing for your interest. But when you're just starting out and learning the game, what deck should you try out first? What decks are easy to learn, and great at teaching you the game, without breaking the bank?
Whilst any Warlord can reward a new player looking to jump right into a specific archetype/realm/strategy, I consider these 5 decks to be some of the best lists for a new player looking to learn the game. Attached to each of these warlords is also a budget version of a top competitive deck, letting you learn the deck and game, at an easier entry price-point, whilst also being competitive options to bring to your local/online campaign events.
Clicking on the link for each deck will bring you to an example of a budget build for the respective warlord.
Budget Starting Decklist Links
Budget Starting Decklist Links
Castiel is a Burn/Tempo deck built entirely around Castiel's powerful Special Ability: Oblation
Oblation removes all counters from the field to deal that much damage to your opponent.
To best make use of this ability, the deck is built to take control of the game in the early turns, and quickly turn over to a burn based kill with Oblation on turn three when you pierce your veil using Holy Counters.
Holy Counters are an angel exclusive mechanic which allows you to protect your cards in play. Whenever a warrior with Holy Counters on it takes damage, the Holy Counters go first in soaking up the attack. If a card with Holy Counters on it would be destroyed, a Holy Counter is removed instead.
Castiel uses these holy counters to control the game early, before turning the counters into a huge amount of burn damage.
The budget version of this deck isn't too expensive, with only one renowned card being necessary, your Guardian: Sigrid, Avenger Of The Lost Messiah. Sigrid is great in Castiel since off the start of the game, you get to eradicate a Lost Messiah or Chaos Divine Card. Most commonly, you'll want to use this to eradicate Oath To The Lost Messiah to set Empyrean Empire Of The Lost Messiah up at the start of the game.
The other most important renowned card in the deck is Helios & Luna, Chaos Divine Lovers. This powerful warrior shuts off warrior attacks, and keeps itself protected with holy counters. Many decks can struggle immensely to take Helios & Luna off of the field, and others will usually need to jump through hoops to get through.
For lovers of burn and tempo, Castiel might scratch that itch with flashy kill power and plenty of tools to stop your opponents in their tracks.
Pros +
Pros +
Lost Messiah Tempo is a notably cheap deck to play. Apart from The Twilight Gardens and Majik Void Hollow, the only Exalted cards played in the most competitive version of the deck are Archon, Avenger Of Light, and Qaphsiel, Great Seraphim Faithful. While both are powerful warriors, they're ultimately unnecessary for the deck. For Quaphsiel, Helios & Luna fills the role of a Sanctify warrior for additional counter generation, whilst Bartholomew already provides a powerful Wisdom warrior to have draw power off of Help From The Chaos Divine. Archon is a huge threat on board and one of your best generic tools in a late game scenario, but less necessary for your gameplan of turning early board control into a burn finisher.
The linear gameplan and win condition of the deck helps to allow new players to have a clear goal in sight and more flexibility in navigating the board state and decision points to get there.
This leads to a deck that can be easy to pick up, but carries plenty of strategic depth to improve performance.
Cons -
Cons -
The deck can be somewhat more metagame reliant, which can make tournament successes more hit or miss.
Whilst most matchups for the deck are even or favored, the list can struggle a bit more against Demons and Dwarves.
The deck can be very swingy: many games will be based on obtaining an early advantage in the early game to snowball into your veil pierce turn. As such many games with the deck can be lost as early as turn one if the deck cannot pick up board control.
The deck does however have the ability to grind through a slower start into an explosive rebuild on turn 3.
Tips & Tricks
Tips & Tricks
Chaos Divine Reconnaissance is the best starting card in hand. Recon will often let you draw 3-5 additional cards during your first turn, and will continue to generate card advantage on future turns.
Help From The Chaos Divine is another powerful starting piece, being able to grab two copies of Bartholomew to put two warriors into play and draw two additional cards. Help can fail to provide enough card advantage alone however to take control in the early game, but is usually powerful enough in conjunction with other strong pieces to find a strong starting board state.
Lost Messiah Burn can quickly empty out key pieces from it's deck with Army Of The Lost Messiah and Help From The Chaos Divine removing warriors, and with Empyrean Empire removing Lost Messiah and Chaos Divine cards from your deck. Make sure to keep track of what you have left, and space out your resources to avoid burning out before you can finish off your opponent.
Check out the Lost Messiah Burn primer here on >-LRAWSnapshot-> for more tips and strategies with playing the deck.
Your Veil is one of the most powerful pieces available for the deck. By eradicating two copies of Freelia, you can destroy two fortified cards on your opponent's side without them being able to respond. Your "Chaos Divine" selection of cards can tutor for Help From The Chaos Divine or Chaos Divine Reconnaissance to help generate card advantage, or Acceleration Into The Chaos Divine to trigger important eradication effects from hand, especially Halo Of The Lost Messiah.
Upgrades
Upgrades
Majik Void Typhoon
Majik Void Typhoon is an unassuming Sideboard card that gets a whole new purpose in Castiel. Whilst Typhoon is normally used as a tech piece against mill decks like Black Magic, Castiel can use Typhoon to shuffle back and reuse key cards like Halo Of The Lost Messiah, Acceleration Into The Chaos Divine, and Lost Messiah Corrupt-Sword, Freelia.
Qaphsiel, Great Seraphim Faithful
Qaphsiel is another way to bank up Holy Counters for your card effects and Oblation, aswell as a card advantage machine with both Wisdom and his perish ability.
Archon, Avenger Of Light
Archon is a great beater in the deck, able to attack your opponent on an entirely different axis from your standard oblation kill.
Fandorian midrange is one of the best Midrange decks in the format, with the ability to setup difficult to remove and navigate board states, whilst leveraging powerful interactive tools.
This makes Alero a list with a lot of agency and options into any deck, with rewarding and fun playlines and synergies.
Another advantage of the list is that it's once again very budget, the base list only needing three Renowned cards.
Similarly to Castiel, the most important of these is your Guardian, The Mystic Druid, Leader Of The Hood. The hood's start of game finds any "Hood" card, but primarily Help From The Hood as a great starter for your deck since many of your Armaments can be reattached from discard.
The other important part of the Mystic Hood is that some of your cards are only usable if you have the Hood as your guardian, especially Anti-Magic Resistance Force and Hood Protection Cloak.
The other main renowned card in the deck is Dark Wood Hood Hideout which is a strong removal spell and repeatable negate, but ultimately not necessary for players just looking to pick up the deck.
Anti-Magic Resistance Force is one of the best cards in the deck and is a bit pricier for a Rare due to it's strength, but is still highly accessible with a Wintertide Wonders reprint, and ultimately, the deck remains quite affordable overall.
Alero is a great option for midrange players looking for strong disruptive tools and powerful threats.
Pros +
Pros +
The deck is cheap to build, and none of the Exalted options for the deck are needed to play it at a powerful level.
The deck is one of the best true Midrange decks in the game with a focus on powerful mid-game boards, and strong interactive tools.
This helps ensure that the deck has strong play into most matchups, with flexible tools to deal with a variety of threats in interesting ways.
This deck is great for anyone who enjoys "Voltron" style decks in other TCG. Many of the Armaments in LRAW can be re-equipped from the discard pile, so you'll very rarely be completely blown out by removal.
Cons -
Cons -
The techy nature of the deck can require a bit more metagame learning. With some of the most unique tech cards available in the game, the deck will run best when you can figure out what tech pieces are powerful in which scenarios, and how to best use them.
The deck has quite a few tutors, and when you start out, it might take a few games to figure out what cards are best to tutor in various situations.
The deck isn't the most explosive, focusing more on grindy midrange gameplay. Fans of combo styles of gameplay may want to look elsewhere when trying out decks.
Tips & Tricks
Tips & Tricks
Darkwood Archers and Betrayal From Within are an incredibly powerful removal combo.
Archers can be set face down on your turn, and Betrayal can then be used after to destroy it. This will trigger Archer's on destruction effect for great effect. As well, since Archers is a fortified card, if you're triggering it on your turn your opponent's negates will almost never be able to stop it once Betrayal has resolved.
Fandorian Outpost is a fantastic card in the deck, able to buff your Fandorian Warriors and tutor a Fandorian card every single turn. Especially powerful is that Fandorian Outpost can tutor itself, and you can have multiple in play. As such, a common early play is chaining copies of Fandorian Outpost together to setup all 3 up on board to have access to card selection/advantage in turns afterwards.
Armament cards will always follow the Warrior they're attached to. If a Warrior is destroyed, they'll go to discard along side it. If the Warrior is bounced back to your hand however, you'll get those Armaments back in hand.
If a Warrior is eradicated, you'll lose any Armaments attached to it to eradication as well!
Upgrades
Upgrades
Gailion's Golden Gauntlets
These Gauntlets let you buff a warrior by +5 and give it the Valiant keyword, turning any warrior into a threat your opponent has to deal with. Additionally, Gauntlets can be replayed from discard after a turn, making it a threatening card your opponent always has to be prepared to deal with.
Sharn is currently one of the three strongest decks in the metagame, as an aggro deck with a consistent setup and a plethora of options to reward learning and improving.
Sharn has plenty of key lines and play patterns, and practicing Sharn with goldfishing can be a great way to improving your skill with the deck, and with playing LRAW overall.
Even as one of the strongest decks in the game, Sharn can be built at a strong level on a budget, with only 3 Renowned cards.
Temple Of Duskzog is Sharn's main win-condition, buffing your Boar tokens by the number of Orc Warriors in your discard pile. With cards like Reservoirs Of Revival Ooze and Desolation Outpost Of The Outer Rim able to fill your discard pile easily. The requirement of running Outer Rim, Trial Grounds Of Blood is a small cost, as the synergy is incredibly powerful on its own.
As mentioned, the synergy Outer Rim, Trial-Grounds Of Blood is required to run Temple Of Duskzog, and is a great way to support the kill potential of Temple. Trial-Grounds destroys part of your opponent's defensive Fortified backline, and fills your board with Boar tokens. This bolsters Sharn's already powerful kill potential on turn three, but she can also easily find kills a turn earlier.
For any fans of Aggro Strategies, Sharn Boars is a highly recommended deck to try, with plenty of aggressive power and quick finishers.
Pros +
Pros +
Sharn is one of the strongest decks in the game, and will be able to threaten a lot of power even as you learn.
The deck has an incredibly high skill ceiling. Because of this, Sharn will reward players who stick with the deck to learn the playlines through and through.
The deck is great for learning solid playlines and play patterns that can help with learning new decks in the future.
The deck can perform incredibly well with minimal upgrades, right out of the starter deck, as many of the budget pieces included in the Starter Deck are core parts of the deck.
Cons -
Cons -
Can be a touch more complex, and effective play will rely on learning at least the basic combos, although these are easier to learn.
The most competitive versions of Sharn utilize a variety of Bounty tech pieces alongside Orc Exalted cards. Luckily many of these are unnecessary to the success of the deck.
Zelfor'Tork is one of the strongest Exalted additions, being able to cycle your Warriors to churn through cards. Serenasada is another powerful addition for setting up early game power, but other Bounty Guardians like Galterius and Viviana can also be used to strong effect.
Many of the other Exalted pieces seen in builds of Sharn are more utility pieces then crucial additions.
Tips & Tricks
Tips & Tricks
Sildud's Call Of The Orcbane and Reservoirs Of Revival Ooze are some of the best cards in your opening hand, with Sildud's Call letting you grab copies of Pride Of The Orcbane to discard and draw, and Ooze letting you access a toolbox of warriors, including Mogak for Plunder, and Lambug for Retrieve.
Pits Of The Outer Rim is restricted to a single copy, and for good reason. As a Fortified card, Pits can blow up 4/5 of your opponent's Fortified cards before they have the chance to use them if you can get it to resolve.
Be cautious with your Unified card zones. With 5-6 different Active Unified cards in the deck, it can be easy to run out of Unified slots, potentially giving your opponent the opportunity to activate cards without you being able to respond to or negate them.
Luckily, with Outer Rim Exclusion Zone you can destroy your used or unneeded Active cards to create more Boar tokens.
Upgrades
Upgrades
Zelfor'Tork, The Fatal Frenzy
Zelfor'Tork's Feast keyword is an effective tool for turning your Orcbane warriors into cards in hand, with a Perish that can wipe important cards off of your opponents board.
Serenasada, The Secret Soothsayer
Serenasada is currently the strongest Guardian available for Sharn, letting you reshape your hand to find your key starting pieces like Sildud's Call Of The Orcbane and Reservoirs Of Revival Ooze.
Another powerful Midrange deck, Mortis Grimm is arguably the most difficult deck on this list, with its combo style setup turns, but these combo style turns can be very linear and consistent, making it much easier to learn, especially for anyone with previous experience playing TCGs.
As previously mentioned, the combo self mill synergy of Mortis can be much easier to learn through gold-fishing, the process of testing a deck on it's own or playing against yourself. You won't need to have the strongest knowledge against the other lists you'll be fighting against to be able to make powerful plays with Mortis.
The self mill combo style game play can be incredibly fun, and Mortis is a simpler floor for learning these styles of play.
The deck remains cheap with only three necessary Renowned cards.
Meg'Saria, Princess Of Lost Souls is a solid guardian, sending a warrior to the discard pile at the start of the game. Just as importantly, Denial By Doomfire is a great negate that can be activate in the discard pile, but requires an Undead Gaurdian. That alone makes Meg'Saria worth a slot in Mortis. If you're unable to track down a copy of Meg'Saria, Belladonna The Putrid Nightshade also gives you access to Denial By Doomfire, but her abilities are less useful for Mortis.
Esmerelda, The Grimm Necromancer is a great warrior for every aspect of Mortis's gameplan. When comboing or setting up, Esmerelda lets you loop and bring back warriors to generate value and fill your discard pile with cards. On the defensive end, Esmerelda and Prysm, Soul-Collector Of The Grimm form a Warrior reviving loop, forcing your opponent to find a way to break the loop apart, or to find another way to end the game.
For mill and combo players alike, Mortis offers powerful openers and combo-centric playlines to blow your opponents out of the water.
Pros +
Pros +
It's easy to practice playing the deck on your own time, since many of the important play lines aren't dependent on action/interaction from your opponent.
Playing the deck is a great way to familiarize yourself with the Sequence/Second Sequence system, and to learn how the Sequences build and resolve.
The base build of the deck isn't too expensive, and there's plenty of room to upgrade with additions like Invitation To The Masquerade, Death's Doorstep, and Vampire Baby Doom. Whilst all of these cards are powerful, they aren't needed at all to build a competitive version of the deck.
Cons -
Cons -
The deck can have a more linear gameplan and due to this the deck can have more swingy matchups. Decks like Sharn can easily Rampage over your Warriors, and other lists like Castiel can Eradicate some of your key cards, limiting your ability to loop resources and access key win conditions.
The linear game plan also makes the list weaker to certain mill hate cards like Close The Gateway and Spirits Of The Brackus Pond. Majik Void Collapse can also hurt, turning off many of your important Warrior keywords.
Tips & Tricks
Tips & Tricks
Grimm Wish For More Life is one of your best pieces for churning through your library since it keeps your DCM topped up and can be easily retrieved and chained with Sir Grimm Crimson, The Undead Prince.
The Prince himself is also one of the strongest cards in your deck, able to bring back any important Unified and Fortified cards, and letting you bring back Grimmace, The Grimm Princess for removal and card advantage.
Prysm, Soul-Collector Of The Grimm and Esmerelda, The Grimm Necromancer are great warriors, letting your revive your Grimm Warriors over and over again. One especially powerful piece is that Prysm and Esmerelda can revive each other, locking out a variety of battle focused decks from being able to push in damage if they're unable to turn off your loop.
Haunted Labyrinth can be a powerful control piece, since the mill is for cost. If your opponent's library is empty, or only has one card left, they won't be able to conscript or attack with Warriors.
Upgrades
Upgrades
Death's Doorstep
Death's Doorstep is an interactive piece for the Undead Realm, letting you steal your opponent's perish effects to give you their benefits, or just to stop them from activating. Doorstep isn't a necessary part of your gameplan, but is a strong piece against a variety of decks reliant on Perish effects.
Invitation To The Masquerade
Invitation is a more powerful piece for setting up starts with any Undead deck. Whilst this can steal decks from your opponent's deck, it's more frequently used to setup some of your key Warriors. Invitation was released in Wintertide Wonders as a future drop exalted which will be printed in a future set. The in-discard effect is also powerful, letting you wipe an opponent's board, or clear your own away to replay Unified cards for value.
Vampire Baby Doom
Baby Doom can help pick up card advantage through your revives over the course of a game, but not being a Grimm warrior makes it only a small upgrade over a card like Agatha, Ancient Girl Of The Grimm who can be revived with Esmerelda and Prysm.
Frost Tempo is a strong Tempo deck, and a fantastic teacher for learning various timing rules and mechanics in the game, and for learning game play roles, and understanding when to go on the defensive, and when to go on the offensive.
Frost Tempo isn't the easiest deck to pick up from this list, but is a great way to learn many different components of the game, and can be incredibly fun to boot.
Whilst the tempo strategy of the deck can lead to it being run over, Frost Tempo is a strategy that generally has a strong degree of agency against any other deck, regardless of play/draw. You've got tools to face off against any style of deck.
There are a large number of interaction points where an advantage can be gained from good planning/strategy, making the deck rewarding for learning and improving.
Kindle-Haust, Blastforge Fire-Sparker is the only Exalted card included in these 5 budget lists, and for good reason. Kindle-Haust is a powerhouse of a warrior for Frost Tempo, as it lets you clear a board of warriors from your opponent, and clear your own board to fill with more warriors. The fact that you can tutor for Kindle off of Stoga-Frost's perish makes him even more important, as he'll be a key component of any game you play with Frost Tempo. Luckily, Kindle saw a second edition reprinting in Empires On The Rise, making him a very accessible Exalted.
Mount Fingar, The Frozen Peak is the one renowned card in the deck that I would consider necessary to play fully competitive Frost Tempo. The synergy lets you bounce any two cards in play, and make some Frost Wolves. This can remove problematic control pieces from your opponent's board, bounce away their backline at an inopportune moment, or bounce your own cards to replay for value. Additionally, Mount Fingar is needed to run Welcoming Of Wintertide, one of your best control and card selection tools, as well as some upgrades for the deck like Tundra Of The Tempests.
For fans of tempo and control, Quartzheart offers disruption, card advantage, and powerful setup finisher lines.
Pros +
Pros +
The deck's aggressive combo kill is great for teaching play patterns/lines, and for understanding when a window of opportunity is open.
The deck's control elements help to teach the value of card advantage/board advantage, and can offer incredibly strong blowout plays.
Both of these strengths are elevated by their combination, and learning when to rely on either half of the archetype.
The deck will very rarely be completely stomped by any deck, and almost every match will have relevant decision making and points of interaction.
The deck is incredibly rewarding with improvements, with many strategic decisions that don't necessarily make or break matches, but provide little pieces of relevant advantage.
The deck's win condition offers a clear goal to work towards, with variety in the play patterns required to get there. This means that newer players can have success starting out with the deck, and can see meaningful improvements with better learning these common playlines, and being aware of when they show up.
Cons -
Cons -
The deck is a bit more pricey in comparison to some of the other decks on this list. Kindle is a key combo/removal tool which is incredibly beneficial in both defensive and offensive game states. The fully upgraded version of the deck is also a bit heaver on the Exalted side, and with a few Renowned cards aswell.
Whilst the deck has strong gameplay into almost any matchup, if the deck fails to get off the ground and find important setup pieces early, it can be swept away by combo-centric decks able to snowball more aggressively.
Tips & Tricks
Tips & Tricks
Try to look for either Stoga-Frost, Blastforge Flame Keeper or Keltor's Explosive Kit in your opening hand. This will quickly let you generate card advantage, and find your Kindle-Haust to be able to start controlling out your opponent and removing their warriors from the board.
Apart from these key starter cards, Welcoming Of Wintertide and Windenmere Island are key cards in defensive and offensive situations respectively, and both are high value targets in your opening hand/mulligan, and off of your Stoga-Frost wisdom abilities.
Note which of your abilities target on activation, and which ones don't.
The second ability of Nisty's Warcleaver will only take place whilst resolving, meaning paying bloodbourne and choosing target cannot be responded to or stopped, and you only need to decide whether you are activating this secondary ability whilst the card is resolving.
Kindle-Haust's Shockwave and Gust abilities happen independently. You can use both, one, or neither when Kindle-Haust enters play.
Kindle-Haust's Perish ability however requires a target for both the Shockwave and Gust ability, meaning it cannot be activated with only one target in play.
Check out the Frost Tempo primer here on >-LRAWSnapshot-> for more tips and strategies with playing the deck.
Upgrades
Upgrades
Tundra Of The Tempests
Tundra Of The Tempests is a great value piece, letting you mill cards to setup Retrieve effects and In-discard effects, as well as bouncing Warriors for defense or value.
Serenasada, The Secret Soothsayer
Serenasada is a great Guardian for Quartzheart. Her start of game ability lets you better shape your hand to find key starting cards like Keltorr's Explosive Kit and Stoga-Frost, Blastforge Flame Keeper. Her Consume ability works great with Quartzheart's special ability as well, letting you dig for cards 4 turns in a row, or to dig twice in one turn.
Frostfall Fortress
Frostfall is a great value piece in Frost Tempo with three key abilities. It's first ability lets you destroy any two cards on the field, stymieing an opponent's plans, or shutting down their defensive tools to go for the win. The Once Per Turn helps to control the board, and get extra warriors into play and out of your hand. The Static buff is significant too, and when your win condition involves bouncing and replaying your warriors over and over, that +2 ATK buff adds up to a ton.
Beckon The Mistral Winds
Beckon is a sweet new control tool out of Wintertide Wonders that sets up a Fortified backline all on it's own. Shattered On The Frozen Anvil is one of the strongest control/card advantage tools that Quartzheart has available, and Beckon lets you put multiple online all at once. Into The Frozen Deep is another great defensive Frozen tool that can be grabbed off of Beckon. Beckon also has an incredibly flexible in-discard ability, defensively locking your opponent out of Unified or Warrior zones for a turn, or proactively limiting their backline setup.
Guardians' Creed Update:
Guardians' Creed Update:
with the release of GCD, a few card options in the lists have been changed and updated, and there are a few more options/pathways for upgrades for the decs.
Budget Starting Decklist Links
Budget Starting Decklist Links
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