A Biblically Accurate Guide To Castiel

Thomas Neilson

Castiel Lost Messiah Tempo| Deck & Primer |October 30, 2023

Written by - Thomas NeilsonOctober 30th, 2023

Updated Deck Primer Available Here (March 31, 2024)

With the release of Empires On The Rise, Castiel, Tears Of The Lost Messiah jumped out at me as an interesting new warlord for a few reasons. The deck is focused entirely around Castiel's Special Ability: Oblation. Oblation strips all counters from the board to deal that much damage (-4) to your opponent. With your win-condition built directly into your Warlord, the deck can largely focus on setting up an Oblation kill as one of the most consistent veil-flip kills in the game. This allows for a powerful and hard to disrupt linear strategy backed up with aggressive board control, and card selection.

THe Last Best Left

Castiel's left side of the board is one of the strongest in the game, with 2/3 slots being central to your gameplan. The Veil of Condemnation/Divinity Realm - Chaos Divine is immediately strong, allowing you to tutor 4 cards from your deck which on it's own is a fantastic veil effect. The card becomes insanely valuable however, with the Absolute Effect mechanic that veils intrinsically have. This Absolute Effect means that veils cannot be stopped or interacted with.

With the Veil of Enchantment/Magical Realm Veil, this means the tutor effect cannot be stopped by cards like Majik Void Aurora which prevent non-bounty tutor effects. Veil of Gelid/Frost Realm can bounce two of your opponent's fortified cards without them being able to activate them in response. Notably, the Absolute Effect is also added to the effects of cards activated by the veil.

With the Veil of Condemnation, this means any card effects triggered by the eradication ability of the Veil cannot be responded to, and cannot be stopped by hate cards. This is notable with most of your eradication effects, but significantly with Lost Messiah Corrupt-Sword, Freelia whose Rift trigger can destroy any of your opponents fortified cards without them having a window to activate them, and can even activate through an active Concrete Catacombs. Essentially, your Veil provides you with access to a few tools to help build up enough counters on your kill turn, and lets you remove two of your opponents fortified cards through Concrete Catacombs, including Catacombs itself.

Sigrid, Avenger Of The Lost Messiah is another key piece, although mainly for her start of game ability, allowing you to eradicate a Lost Messiah or Chaos Divine card from your library. Eradicating Oath of the Lost Messiah will allow you to search your library again to find Empyrean Empire of the Lost Messiah into play with 5 holy counters, which gives you access to 2 important things.

Empire's static is one of your main ways to rack up Holy counters on your side of the field to let you build up to a lethal Oblation
Empire allows you to search your library for a card every turn to Eradicate, providing both card advantage and tutoring for specific card effects.

Both of those abilities make Empire an incredibly powerful engine to get online. The 5 holy counters + Static holy counter generation also make Empire nearly impossible for most decks to remove, although there are notable exceptions.

Her Consume ability is a nice way to win games where you can't quite power out enough counters for a clean Oblation kill, or against the recently released Alburdunn's Mayoral Announcement. Do note that Oblation counts the total number -4, and Sigrid counts the total exactly, so make sure to keep track of the total number removed.

I've joked that you can choose your synergy in Castiel via a coin flip, and frankly, it's not far from true. Hall Of The Heavens is the strongest option, and my recommendation. It can be incredibly helpful in setting up your Oblation kill by doubling your holy counters on warriors. Ironically the cards downside is normally it's upside: the card requires you to have two bestow cards in your deck to tutor for, and you can absolutely find yourself in situations with you've ran out of targets to grab.

If you do play Hall, I would heavily recommend counting the number of Bestow cards left in your deck after you select your tutor targets from your Veil, to ensure you aren't locked out of activating it.

Celestial Kingdom Of Glory is another strong option, and the best synergy to have in games that go past turn 3, since it gives you a way to put warriors on board when you've ran out. The synergy can help on your kill turn, especially in combination with Virtuous Oasis in play, but will generally net you less counters than Hall.

Astral Gates Of The Ascendants can also be strong, but generally is reliant on board, similarly to Hall Of The Heavens, and the upside is weaker than Hall, but the card can still provide a nice board buff and help to refuel. I'd argue it to be the weakest option, but not unusable by any means.

With that being said, Hall Of The Heavens is still generally your best bet for setting up an Oblation kill, which is more frequently useful than the grindier plan of Celestial Kingdom Of Glory.

This buffed up left side leads to the decks incredibly strong turn 3, but also to the vulnerability of the deck outside of your veil flip.

Mulligan Tips

One thing to note about your opening hand in Castiel is with Empire. Generally post mulligan you'll be searching your deck for Oath to the Lost Messiah, to find your Empire. If you find Oath to the Lost Messiah in your opening hand, you'll instead want to eradicate Acceleration Into The Chaos Divine, then use that to eradicate your Oath and resume as normal. If you have Empire in your opening hand however, you'll likely want to hit Army, but not always. Also if your opener has Empire but no unified negates, you can be vulnerable to fortified negates hitting your Empire so if the rest of your opener isn't fantastic then it can be worth sending it back to tutor Empire as normal.

When evaluating your opening hand, there are a few key cards to look for, and if your opening hand doesn't have strong cards to support your gameplan, or relevant interactive pieces it can be worth giving your opponent an additional card since the deck can depend quite heavily on having a strong early start.

Chaos Divine Reconnaissance is one of the only Angel cards currently on the restricted list, and for good reason. With Castiel you can easily fill your board from empty on every turn of the game if need be, and Reconnaissance compliments this board flood with an egregious amount of card advantage. In addition, it's ability to control the top card of your opponents deck can be useful, especially if your opponent has manipulated the top card of their deck, and gives you another trigger to tick up your counters on Empire.

Help From The Chaos Divine is another key card, especially as unlike Army Of The Lost Messiah, it lets you tutor for warriors that aren't Lost Messiah, notably Qaphsiel, Great Seraphim Faithful, and Helios & Luna, Chaos Divine Lovers. Help is also unsurprisingly powerful with Reconnaissance for constantly flooding the board.

Acceleration Into The Chaos Divine is a fantastic piece of card selection, allowing you to grind through your deck and trigger off any Armies or Uprisings stuck in your hand. That being said, Acceleration is also key for triggering eradication effects on your kill turn, so it's helpful to pace them out so you don't run out.

The last key thing to look for in your opener is your interactive pieces, in unified and fortified negates. The angel realm negates especially are incredibly powerful as they're both repeatable, providing negate power over multiple turns. Kabshiel's Favors For The Seraphim lets you negate a fortified each turn at the cost of 4 holy counters, and can turn 2 holy counters into a draw as well. It can also be retrieved with Quaphsiel's perish ability, although that's less of something to play around and more of a nice bit of utility when it comes up. Controlled By The Chaos Divine is the fortified negate option for Castiel, and can negate a unified and let you eradicate a card at the same time. In addition, the card has a static making it's abilities un-negate-able, although do note that this static only applies AFTER the card has been first activated. If you flip the card face-up to negate a unified, that ability can be negated.

Since your gameplan largely runs off of empire, a hand that's heavy on interaction can be powerful enough to slow your opponent down whilst you use Empire to hold onto the board.

The Eradication Station

Lost Messiah has a collection of cards that activate when eradicated, and some builds lean much heavier into having a critical mass of eradication effects, but I've found that trying to rip eradication effects with Lake Of The Lost Messiah or Halo Of The Lost Messiah can be a bit too inconsistent. Plus, with access to Empyrean Empire Of The Lost Messiah and Acceleration Into The Chaos Divine, I've found the deck has enough selective eradication to activate effects to where hitting a critical mass isn't necessary, and you can have far more selection in what you eradicate and when you do it.

There are a few key cards with important eradication effects, the main ones being Halo, Army, Freelia, Uprising, and Righteous Dark

Halo Of The Lost Messiah

Halo is your main engine for powering out holy counters, potentially giving your board 15 holy counters, helping to protect your warriors, and churn out counters for a lethal oblation.
Halo is an incredibly powerful card for protecting your board state, but be careful not to run out of copies too quickly if you don't have a way to recycle.

Army Of The Lost Messiah

Army, alongside Help From The Chaos Divine, is one of your best tools for building a board quickly, which can be especially potent in combination with Chaos Divine Reconnaissance.
Filling your board with Army is especially key for setting up Halo to generate tons of counters for Oblation.

Lost Messiah Corrupt-Sword, Freelia

Freelia's Rift mechanic is one of your key tools for removing any problematic cards your opponents can put into play.
One of the most powerful options that Freelia provides is being able to remove 2 fortified cards off of your veil flip, providing a massive boon to breaking through interaction on the pivotal veil flip turn.

Lost Messiah - Righteous Dark

Righteous Dark is mostly powerful for its main removal mode, allowing you to blow up 3 permanents at the same time.
The eradication mode is less useful, only removing 1 warrior, but is useful as it lets you remove problematic warriors without sacrificing Freelia's early.
Righteous Dark does require 3 targets, but if your opponent is missing a warrior, unified, or fortified, you can hit one of your cards with holy counters to remove 2 cards.

Uprising Of The Chaos Divine

Uprising is more of a flex option than Halo, Army, or Freelia, but allows you to revive important warriors from eradication when needed.
The board buff from the ability is useful, but importantly you cannot activate it unless you are reviving a warrior, meaning you need to have one in eradication, and need to have an open board space.

Acceleration Into The Chaos Divine

Acceleration is one of the strongest cards in the deck whether it's being played regularly or eradicated. The most important thing to watch out for is to not run out of copies, since tutoring a copy off of veil flip can be key for setting up lines to stock up holy counters for Oblation.

Key Cards/Strategies

Lost Messiah Sentry, Crucidel

Crucidel has a unique effect, redirecting cards sent to either players discard directly to their eradication zones instead. Against decks that care about their discard piles, you can setup turns where you trigger Crucidel's perish before sending some of their key pieces to eradication. Crucidel also enables you to get both the regular effect and eradication effects from cards you play.

Helios & Luna, Chaos Divine Lovers

Helios & Luna are currently the only card in the game with the Serenity ability, which locks your opponent out of attacking with their warriors. This headache inducing mechanic is also paired with Sanctify, providing a built in protection mechanism for Helios & Luna. Additionally, since Helios & Luna is a Chaos Divine card, the Sanctify triggers will also double dip, triggering Empire's static ability.

CHaos Divine Reconnaissance

As mentioned in the mulligan guide, Recon is one of the strongest cards in the deck. The deck can sometimes have to choose between maintaining card advantage and board advantage, and Reconnaissance lets you have your cake and eat it to, filling your hand as you fill the board. If you don't get Recon from your starting hand, it can be a great grab from your veil if your board is empty.

Bow Of The ARchangel

One of the strengths of Castiel is your veil ability using Freelia to blow up two fortified cards without your opponent being able to activate them. With Bow, you can do the same thing to their other three aswell, completely clearing your opponents backline. The fact that Bow sends instead of destroying, also allows you to knock out a few problematic cards on board when necessary.

Reduce, Reuse Recycle

Whilst Castiel focuses on eradicating cards for additional effect, the deck doesn't care particularly about keeping cards in the eradication zone, unlike Titan decks or other eradication decks. Frequently, you'd rather keep cards in your deck for when you need them, like Freelia or Halo.

During the game you should take care of what resources you use, to avoid running out by the time your veil flips. If you do run out however, you have a few options to reset your eradication pile for reuse.

Mists From The Fata Morgana is a useful way to achieve this, with it's ability to shuffle back 3 cards. Going into your veil flip, it can be easily worth using a Mists just for the shuffle ability.

The more useful option here, however, is Majik Void Typhoon. For 20 consume, Void Typhoon shuffles back both players discard and eradication piles, and refills both players with two cards in hand. This can be a useful hate piece against discard and other eradication focused decks, although giving your opponents cards in hand is never a good idea.

The card is mostly useful for resetting your eradication pile to regain access to important cards. This can come up especially in grindier matchups where your opponent has enough resources to weather the storm of your turn 3, and you need to set back up for another Oblation.

Notable Matchups & Sideboarding Strategies

Sharn Aggro Boars

Sharn is one of the top decks in the meta, able to threaten a quick win against any deck. For Castiel, we luckily have a fantastic plan against Sharn in Helios & Luna. The Serenity ability completely shuts out Sharn from pushing damage face, and with Sanctify plus the additional counter generation in the deck you can stack up loads of holy counters to fight through their destruction effects. The main card in their deck to be worried about is For The Love Of Carnage, which can easily deal enough damage to Helios to remove most of your holy counters, although it is restricted to a single copy.

The problem however, comes in the fact that many Sharn players have swapped over to the Veil of Advancement, which allows them to steal your Helios & Luna and punch through. Because of this the match can be incredibly dependent on play/draw, as if your opponent goes first they'll be able to steal your Helios & Luna before you have the chance to kill them. Still. being able to shut them down for the first turns of the game is huge, and if you can get rid of the scorpions, you can turn off their attacks once again.

To accompany this gameplan, I swap guardians from Sigrid to Alexandria, Protector Of The Pure, and swap Oath and another card for the two additional copies of Empire.

Although losing the guaranteed turn one Empire hurts, having a Helios & Luna on turn one can be huge, and completely backbreaking if you are going first.

The gameplan of using Alexandria to setup Helios & Luna is also relevant in a few other matchups, Sh'lara for example can also struggle to remove a protected Helios & Luna, having only Feathers In The Wind and Mystic Fire Of The Manticore to remove it. Majik Void Collapse can also be rough, but can't be tutored or retrieved.

Adramelech Black Magic

Black Magic may not be at the top of the tier list, but it can be highly prevalent, and the interactions between Castiel and Adramelech lead to an interesting matchup. A lot of your eradication effects on cards can be triggered regardless of how they were eradicated, but a few care about only about being eradicated by Lost Messiah or Chaos Divine cards, so be careful.

Also, just because you can activate an ability off of an eradicated card doesn't mean that you need to or should. Using up your own resources unnecessarily can easily lead to a loss against Adramelech if you're emptying your own library with Army or Acceleration.

Additionally Adramelech can set Cathedral Of Black Magic off the start of the game which can get rid of Empire, but because they eradicate so many cards from your deck, I find that more often than not they end up eradicating a Freelia, which lets me blow up Cathedral before it even has the chance to flip.

Also, having Majik Void Typhoon in your maindeck is a great way to give your local Adramelech player migraines, and I'd recommend trying to find the card before their eradication effects do.

Ethelhime Alehouse Tempo

One of the strengths of Castiel is in how difficult it is for your opponent to remove Empire from the board. Even decks that can remove Empire usually have to go out of their way to do so. Usually.

Similarly to how Castiel can set Empire in play at the start of the game, Ethelhime can set Exit The Alehouse at the start of the game: a Fortified negate that shuffles back it's target.

In addition, Ethelhime has access to Ladonza, The Alehouse Shieldmaiden, who can easily shuffle back Empire with her Quench ability. With two powerful ways to get rid of Empire, the matchup certainly isn't easy. Completely focusing on interaction and bringing in additional copies of Empire can help keep your cards on board, but if the ale starts flowing, there isn't much you can do to stop it.

Conclusion

Castiel is an incredibly powerful deck, and notably one of the strongest new warlords out of Empires On The Rise. With a strong linear gameplan backed up by powerful interaction and card selection the deck can be tuned to take on most of the meta, and put up strong results, and the deck has more to be excited about when Opus approaches.

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