A Biblically Accurate Guide To Castiel #2

Thomas Neilson

Castiel Lost Messiah Tempo| Deck & Primer |March 31, 2024

Written by - Thomas NeilsonMarch 31st, 2024

Updated Deck Primer Available Here (January 7, 2025)

I put out a primer for Castiel back at the end of October of last year, and whilst most of the information in that primer is still pretty up to date, I wanted to revisit the deck closer to the second half of EOR's life-cycle, explore what's changed, and add even more tips for playing the deck. The older primer can be found here(!) but all information from that primer has been kept and updated for 2024.

The only real notable main deck change that I've personally made is the addition of Bartholomew, Seraphim Curator. Whilst Bartholomew isn't a Lost Messiah Warrior and can't be grabbed by Army Of The Lost Messiah, the Wisdom ability more than makes up for it. Additionally, although it is replacing spots traditionally taken by a plethora of swift warriors, the Perish ability allows Bartholomew to help reduce the threat of warrior flood, letting you trade in a Bartholomew to conscript another Seraphim Wisdom warrior. The addition of Bartholomew also makes Help From The Chaos Divine a significantly better opener on its own.

Past this, I've reduced some cards which have felt either

a) Underwhelming in the early turns

b) Punishing when multiples are drawn.

Beacon Of The Blossoming Leilani has often felt like more of a roadblock in the early game than a piece of action which helps the deck to gain board control, and the three copies of Kabshiel's Favours For The Seraphim has been reduced to two copies, with one copy of Sanctuary Of The Ascendants being tested as an additional board control piece.

Between the addition of Bartholomew and the removal of these more situational pieces, the deck has felt much more consistent in setting up powerful boardstates early.

Castiel, Tears Of The Lost Messiah leads Lost Messiah Tempo, a deck seeking to control the board in the first three turns before utilising Castiel's Special Ability: Oblation to find a one turn burn kill on veil flip. Oblation strips all counters from the board to deal that much damage (-4) to your opponent.

Although the deck may look at a glance like a combo kill style deck similar to Adramelech Black Magic or Ethelhime Alehouse, the play style of the deck relies much more heavily on the tempo of controlling the board early. Your actual "combo kill" only involves filling the board with holy counters on your veil turn, something easily achieved with Halo Of The Lost Messiah.

Your Veil flip kill depends much more on your ability to surive and generate card advantage in the early game than your ability to actually combo out on turn 3.

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.

Hall Of The Heavens remains the strongest choice for Castiel for two reasons. The doubling ability makes hitting a lethal counter count for Oblation ridiculously easy. With a board of warriors, and the eradication ability of two copies of Halo Of The Lost Messiah the double puts you at 60 Counters on board alone, from which you should easily be able to kill most opponents. The tutor ability can also help access a large variety of different cards, most obviously Halo and Beacon Of The Blossoming Leilani to increase your counters, as well as various warriors and tech options. Hall does require two legal targets in deck upon activation however, and if you don't have those copies you can't use the counter doubling ability.

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 and Astral Gates Of The Ascendants can also be strong, but are less consistently useful than Hall for setting up kills. Both can theoretically help you more in a late game situation, but not to a higher degree than Hall is, and trying to fight a long game is generally a losing battle for Castiel.

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. I don't know that I can think of a situation where I would mulligan away a hand with Reconnaissance in it, as the draw power that Reconnaissance powers, combined with the flexible utility of Empyrean Empire can turn any mediocre opening hand into a resilient board choke hold.

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. The addition of Bartholomew has made Help a significantly better starting card, as grabbing two Wisdom warriors lets you dig four cards deep, adding two of those cards to your hand. Whilst this doesn't match the sheer critical card draw mass of Reconnaissance, Help From The Chaos Divine is a very solid reason to keep a hand, assuming the rest of the hand is solid and relevant in the matchup. Help is also unsurprisingly powerful with Reconnaissance for constantly flooding the board.

Qaphsiel, Great Seraphim Faithful and Bartholomew, Seraphim Curator give you four copies of Wisdom Warriors, helping to provide selective card selection, solving one of the previous issues with Castiel. Any hand with Reconnaissance is a snap keep in all but the most specific scenarios, but Help From The Chaos Divine plus a Wisdom Warrior is the second best thing. With Counter generation from Qaphsiel and plenty of card selection, this helps to find the tools needed to hold onto the board in the early game.

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 Favours 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 Qaphsiel'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, Righteous Dark and Acceleration

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 the normal ability of Army is an easy way to setup a full board for generating tons of counters with Halo 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's usually your best grab off of your veil, unless your board is already full to the brim.

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.

Match-ups & Sideboarding Strategies

Favoured Match-ups

Castiel is lucky to have more favoured matchups than unfavoured, usually due to decks being either vulnerable to specific hate/utility pieces out of Castiel, or just being susceptible to the decks consistent turn three kill.

Duxvox - Doomsday control

There isn't a ton to worry about in this matchup. They can steal your warriors somewhat easily, but don't have a consistent path to find lethal anywhere close to veil pierce. Try to limit their backline development to make your job easier on veil pierce.

Sh'Lara - Mystic Fire Midrange

Mythic Beasts can struggle with finding enough repeated destruction effects to deal with mass holy counters, and this is a deck that can certainly pump out a lot of holy counters if you try. Switching to Alexandria and Helios & Luna lets you turn one of the plans that Sh'Lara can have to potentially kill on turn three or even turn two in rarer scenarios.

Merrisod - Dragons Midrange

Merrisod is largely similar to Sh'Lara, where the list is reliant on battle damage. Merrisod is however a bit better at blasting through counters with looping Lady Darksky, The Dusk Dawn Dragon or using Merciless Dragon Fire.

Merrisod can also threaten to kill Helios & Luna using multiple Physical Attacks off of Dragon Protector Empowerment.

Her low DCM does reduce how much setup you need to find a kill, and makes Oath To The Lost Messiah a way to occasionally find a kill earlier than your opponent expects.

Prometheus - Primordial Aggro

The potential turn two kill can take you out before you have the chance to setup, but Helios & Luna is a brutal roadblock for them to fight through, and can completely shut down their pathway to lethal.

Mortis - Grimm Midrange

Crucidel can be useful to eradicate many of their key tools, and can be sacrificed to their veil ability to stop their speed. Denial By Doomfire is still annoying, but Typhoon and mists give you relevant ways to remove many of their negates going into your veil flip turn.

Alero - Fandorian Midrange

Their interactive pieces can be annoying to deal with, but they heavily struggle to put the same level of aggression that you can, and can fail to keep a strong enough back line into veil flip.

Even Match-ups

Even matchups usually fall into two categories: Other veil flip kill decks where the matchup can be notably swingy and play/draw dependent, and control deck matchups which can also heavily favour the player that can setup board control first.

Quartzheart - Frost Tempo

The first of three veil kill decks with relevant interactive tools, Quartzheart's access to bounce based removal can be difficult to deal with, and can lead to unfortunate blow outs.

Shattered On The Frozen Anvil is one of the most brutal fortified cards an opponent can activate against you, and you should be conservative using your negates in the early game.

Otherwise, its a pretty even matchup where their interactive tools are slightly better, but your veil kill is more consistent.

Marianas - Ancient Relic Aggro

Marianas has the second most consistent veil kill, but you have a solid number of interactive pieces that can break up their kills, even without mists. Watch out for their Majik Void hate pieces, especially Majik Void Collapse and Majik Void Aurora.

If you have Mists, rip them really aggressively before turn 3 to shuffle back your important pieces like Acceleration, Help, Freelia, and non-Lost Messiah warriors.

Against the midrange version of Marianas, your match-up is a little bit better, try to use your Mists to shuffle back their discard value tools on their turn if you can.

Angelica - Dice Combo

Angelica completes the trio of other tempo decks that can also kill on veilflip. Compared to Quartzheart and Marianas however, the list isn't packing the same level of consistency and brutal hate pieces.

The deck can still threaten consistent veil kills with the many powerful tech cards available to heroes, but there isn't anything particularly brutal like with Quartzheart and Marianas.

Your Mists should also be activated earlier than you think on their veil flip.

They might not be able to win the negate war before they activate their synergy, but they can definitely win it after.

Onoskelis - Fallen Control

Onoskelis isn't a veil flip kill deck, but otherwise operates on a similar axis to you: take control of the board & stop opponent from even thinking about resolving cards.

This can make the matchup a little bit of a coinflip, but their slower gameplan allows you more room to attempt to grind.

I however, didn't choose this deck so that I could grind.

My personal sideboard plan involves the third Bow Of The Archangel, and Seraphim Shatter Star. Bow helps setup spots where you can blow up 3/5 fortified cards before your veil pierce to clear the way for a kill, where Shatter Star's card generation on discard, and in discard ability lets you more aggressively devote resources to shutting your opponent out, especially with the Denial ability of Dominium.

Your other negate cards in the sideboard can also come in on play/draw to either setup a stronger backline, or fight through one on your opponent's side.

Majik Void Typhoon can also be an unexpectedly powerful card in the matchup as a way to catch up and setup in situations where you are forced to play the game past turn three.

Gaia - Unstoppable Control

Gaia is similar to Onoskelis, where they have some of the strongest control tools in the game which can completely shut down your veil flip turns, but they can get their tools online a bit more consistently.

Unstoppable Defence is their control tool to fear, able to shut down battle and effect damage as long as blockade warriors remain in play. Against Gaia it can be helpful to quickly identify whether you have better tools to fight their unified, or fortified cards.

If you've got Kabshiel's and Seal, it can be better to stop them from resolving a Defence on your kill turn.

If your opener blesses you with plentiful fortified interaction however, it can be more effective to make sure that Reformation never gets to resolve.

If both of these cards get to resolve, it's likely your turn three will consist of you grumbling and continuing to setup on board: never a situation you want to be in with the "turn three kill deck".

Finding a kill with Castiel on turn three: incredibly easy.

Finding a kill on turn three without warriors: Painfully annoying.

Oath To The Lost Messiah can help to shore this up a bit, offering a way to kill a deck with a low DCM which is reliant on eradicating their library.

Unfavoured Match-ups

Castiel has three main unfavoured matchups, but none of them are obnoxiously unwinnable matchups. Sharn and Adramelech are aggro decks that can kill or nearly kill by turn 2, but can be hit by some specific hate cards in your main deck and side deck, whilst Ethelhime is another veil flip kill deck, bolstered by shuffle based removal that can tear your board state apart.

Adramelech - Black Magic combo

This matchup can feel incredibly hit or miss, with random chance replacing a lot of agency in the matchup. With one Majik Void Typhoon in the main deck and the second in the side, you have one of the strongest tools for dealing with Adramelech, and whether you find it can heavily influence the game. If Typhoon doesn't show up, you can still win games if your opponent is forced to pay a lot of Bloodbourne, or if you can go first with a strong opener to shut them out early.

Your Acceleration Into The Chaos Divine and Army Of The Lost Messiah can both activate when eradicated, but I'd highly recommend letting your Army triggers go unresolved, as removing warriors from your deck makes your opponents job easier, and gives them a way to trigger Sif'Sara's perish ability easily. Activating Acceleration has usually felt worth it to try to find your Mists or Typhoon before they do, and trigger any rift cards in hand to wreck their backline to make your setup turn significantly easier.

The matchup is slightly unfavoured, but a lot of the games you lose and a lot of the games you win will be decided outside of the range of player decisions, so embrace the coin flip, don't tilt to the rng, and pray to the Lost Messiah that your Typhoons may find their way into your opening hand.

Sharn - Boars Aggro

This matchup is one that was significantly easier before Orc players realized that the Doomsday Veil was significantly better than the original one.

In this matchup, Alexandria comes in, and Helios & Luna, Chaos Divine Lovers replace Empyrean Empire as your Holy Counter Jenga Tower of choice. Unfortunately, their veil offers a significantly easier way for them to steal your tower and pummel you with pigs, but you have a few tools to win back the favor of your guardian angels.

Expel The Darkness is an RVL common whose textbox hit me like a truck as soon as I read "No player can respond to this card". Whilst 6 holy counters is a cost that can be difficult to meet in grindier matchups, if you can activate Expel you're in a fantastic spot, stealing back your Helios & Luna. Apart from this, Bow Of The Archangel, and Freelia eradicated off of Controlled By The Chaos Divine also let you snipe away those pesky scorpions, although not without your opponent being able to put up a fight.

Ultimately this is a very winnable matchup, and you have one of the best tools to shut down their win condition, but in games on the draw you'll need a little bit more protection to stay alive, and their deck has a lot of powerful tools past exclusively their aggressive kill potential.

Also play around Pits Of The Outer Rim. You'll only need to see it resolve once to have it burned into your mind.

Ethelhime - Alehouse Storm

The matchup is very tempo dependent; the deck that can get into play first is at a significant advantage. If you can take control, you can shut down all of Ethel's plays as they try to start to storm, but if Ethel has free reign, then say goodbye to any semblance of a board state on your half of the field.

When sideboarding, you'll probably want to swap your guardian to one of your other two. Alexandria when going first, and Galterius when going second. Ideally you should be going first if you can, since tempo is king in this matchup.

Both of these guardians offer immediate card advantage, and Empire can be easily swept away so using it for your main counter generation is risky.

With this change, your main deck Oath should be swapped for your second Empire.

Final Resting Place, Welcome To Alburdunn, and Seraphim Shatter Star are some of your key survival/interaction pieces post board, with Final Resting Place being able to eradicate key warriors like Ladonza, and Shatter Star letting you stick a Seraphim warrior to the board against Quench or any other removal ability, whilst also providing refill when aggressively pushing an advantage through Denial.

Focus on your card advantage and tempo, stop them from storming off at the earliest opportunity, and don't get overly attached to your board state.

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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