Crit Seliph (B15)

## Overview

Written by: Basil

If you ever wanted to play a deck so aggressive you could win the instant you and your opponent reveal your MCs, Crit Seliph (Critleph) is the deck for you. Yellow has a lot of great aggro cards, called the “sword boys'' because they all are sword units and benefit from other sword units (but they’re not necessarily all boys). Critleph uses them, Larcei’s bond skill, and a healthy dose of unfairness from cards like Lewyn and Lachesis to come together into one of the best pure aggro decks in the game.

## Gameplan

Like all good aggro decks, your goal is to kill the opponent before they can do anything. To do this, you’ll be playing a lot of 1 costs early on to beat the crap out of them. Sometimes it even makes more sense to not promote Seliph on turn 2 and instead deploy a couple 1 costs so you can hit them more.

Once your opponent bridges or gets into their main promotion though, you will need to be in yours. The bridge is basically a 70 base because of skill 1, but the reason it’s called Critleph is because of skill 2- pretty much the only bonds you want to be flipping are Larcei’s to let your low costs hit. Then, you can use skill 2 to flip them back up and use them again on other low costs.

Because of this, it's not much of an exaggeration to say having Larcei in your bonds is just as if not more important to you than promoting Seliph. Luckily, you have ways of getting her there even if you don’t get to draw her, the cheapest and most efficient being Deirdre 1. If you’ve got enough Larcei’s though, you can use her to instead unflip something with B08 Seliph’s bond skill, draw a card with Lachesis’s bond skill, or get some utility with Leif 4’s bond skill.

If you fail to kill your opponent and they start stabilizing, but are still denying you orbs (which they should, giving Seliph resources is the fastest way to throw), then you can promote into B19 Seliph. Though it isn’t a great way to finish the game, it basically puts the opponent on a timer, as well as letting you get some more hits in with Larcei crits by unflipping them. And if you do get to use them, you get to forever mock your opponent by t-posing for victory.

## Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths:

* Probably the fastest deck in the game, meaning you can out-aggro aggro decks
* Lots of cheesy ways to keep refueling with Lewyn + Sigurd, Deir + Lachesis, etc
* As long as you have a Larcei or two bonded, pretty much all your units will be able to hit

Weaknesses:

* Dependant on getting Larcei in bonds
* If the game gets past mid-game and the opponent isn’t basically dead, you’ve lost
* Can be pretty swingy with opening hands
* Hurt very badly by anti-crit tech like Xfonse

## Key Cards

### Larcei BS

This is the card that makes your deck work, the “Crit” part of “Critleph”. Getting her in your bonds is your #1 priority other than smashing your opponent’s face in. She’s basically the only thing you’ll be flipping bonds for thanks to Seliph, so having a couple in bonds is ideal. She is also a pretty good deploy as well, either through Lewyn or from hand, since you can use her bond skill to crit and get the untap.

### Deirdre 1 B06

This card kinda feels like cheating. It doesn’t seem that broken, just swapping out a bond, but that alone is incredibly flexible and valuable, especially in this deck where you really want one particular card in bonds. You can obviously get your Larcei in bonds if you need one, but you can also draw a card with Lachesis bond skill if you’re low on cards (and you’re aggro so the answer to that is always yes), you can get an unflip with B08 Seliph’s bond skill, or get a Leif 4 in bonds to move an enemy. If your opponent is smart they may not even kill her in case you redeploy her to get more value.

### Lewyn 0

This card is probably one of the most broken cards in the game. If you play him and deploy 1 unit, you went even. So when you play him on turn  3 and deploy three 1 costs, one of which is Deirdre and gets you your Larcei bond, he just gets such gross value. Drawing 1 or 2 of him can make an otherwise bad hand amazing.

### 1 Cost Swords

Your aggro deck is only as good are your 1 cost beaters- luckily, yellow has some great synergistic ones. Leif is already 50 on both turns due to your MC, Mareeta is easily 50 on offense since you run so many swords, and Shannan can potentially swing for 60. There are other good options as well if you want more 1 drops- Scathach, Chulainn, Sigurd are all viable.

### Arvis 1

If your opponent is smart and doesn’t feel like dying on turn 4, they’ll probably throw whatever they have on the board and move their MC behind them. Well we can’t have that, so that’s why most Critleph decks run Arvis. Simply send a face-down bond to the retreat and get their ass back up in the frontline so you can keep smacking them with your swords. Can also be clutch on the support by moving a non-MC to backline.

## Sample Decks

Basil's Critleph
3 Seliph, Holy King of Divine Bloodlines
4 Larcei, Gods-Matching Astra
4 Leif, Light of Leonster
4 Deirdre, Maiden of the Spirit Forest
4 Arvis, Head of House Velthomer
3 Sigurd, A Soul Who Lived for Love
4 Shannan, Prince of Isaach
4 Lewyn, Resurrected Wind
2 Leif, Prince of Two Sacred Bloodlines
4 Mareeta, Myrmidon of Fiana
3 Lachesis, Leonine Princess+
3 Scathach, Sharp Scion
3 Seliph, Savior of Light+
MC:
1 Seliph, Heir to the Blood of Light (P2)