Hilda (B21)

## Overview

Written by: Basil

Hilda is one of the best tempo cards in the game, letting you deploy a high power brown card for the low cost of tapping her. While you lose out on a large advantage of tempo, getting to swing with multiple units, you get to cheat out the strong 5+ cost brown cards that normally make up the top end of brown as early as turn 3. Since you’re deploying from hand and are going to be using a few crest powers, Hilda can burn out pretty quick, but if her board can stick even a little bit, it can snowball into an overwhelming presence that few decks can overcome.

## Gameplan

Hilda is an interesting tempo MC since she relies more on how powerful her deploys are rather than just having a bunch of them and swinging a bunch. This means her curve can be a bit wonky depending on the build, and generally leans more towards having a strong mid-game where you build up a board and overwhelm the opponent with your strong deploys.

This means that your early game will probably not be great. Hilda is the brown equivalent of a 1 cost flier, so her stats aren’t great for early pressure as a 1 range 30 base, but she has an amazing 70 base bridge to mitigate that a bit. But most games she won’t be doing much early other than going into her bridge and then promoting.

On your promo turn (and most turns), you’ll want to deploy whatever high power brown card you have in hand that fits the situation best. If you’re up on orbs or close to it, B21 Dimitri is great- he can even pop an enemy for free if you’re lucky. If you want to guaranteed destroy something then Seiros is an option that also hits 80 on her own. And a general solid deploy is Edelgard, who can usually swing for 80 and has flip 1 untap for extra pressure.

If you splash another color in Hilda, they will make up the bulk of your regular deploys since you can cheat out your brown ones. Since she drains cards so much, the common splash colors for Hilda are green, purple, and red for their efficient draw power with Micaiah, Eirika, and Marth respectively. They also have their own bonuses, like green having even more tempo with Jill & Kurth and red having Mae to lock the opponent for a turn or two. Mono brown is also a viable build, running Lysithea for draws instead.

Ideally you have Sothis’s Divine Pulse up on turn 5, so you can really start applying pressure on the opponent’s MC. You can use Byleth CP on some of your deploys to help them stick and make your board even bigger until your opponent can’t handle it, or just grind the opponent down with your strong deploys & Divine Pulse like most other brown decks.

## Strengths and Weaknesses

**Strengths:**

* Can cheat out powerful brown cards very early in the game
* Good splash options to mitigate downsides
* Can spend bond flips on other things since your tempo doesn’t have a bond cost

**Weaknesses:**

* Doesn’t get the full effect of tempo since she taps herself
* Can run out of cards extremely fast between CPs and deploying from hand
* Destroyed by Plum and Lilith

## Key Cards

### Brown Deploys (Dimitri, Edelgard, Seiros)

Your most important cards in your deck (other than your main promo of course) are the ones you tempo out with Hilda. To make up for losing the attack on Hilda, they have to be worthwhile enough to deploy early, which is why you go for high cost ones with strong effects. Edelgard is the most generic, just swinging for 80 twice for flip 1, but she is great for ramping up pressure, especially with divine pulse from turn 5 on. Dimitri can draw you a card and even destroy something for free, but your opponent will likely do their best to play around this so you have to time it right while you’re ahead, and you also may want divine pulse up for him too. And Seiros is great since she makes up for the lost swing by immediately popping an enemy, and is 80 base. There are other solid high cost brown options like Claude, Hegemon Edelgard, and Seteth too, but these are the most common.

### Obligatory CPs (Byleth, Sothis)

Byleth and Sothis are the brown auto-includes for most brown decks, and Hilda is no exception. Byleth CP is just so good for protecting your MC, whether it's against aggro in the early game or later in the game when you’re low on orbs, or you can use it to try to protect Hilda’s deploys and build up a board. You can even deploy him with Hilda if you don’t have other choices, he is still pretty solid. Sothis CP is part of what definite brown- on turn 5 on, your attacks are much more annoying to evade, making your on-hit effects like Dimitri go off easier, as well as help you kill your opponent faster as you burn through an extra dodge every turn.

### Lianna

Hilda gets absolutely wrecked by 2 tech cards, Plumeria and Lilith, so having Lianna in your deck to help clear them is really important. Lilith is more annoying since even after you pop her you can’t tempo anything out, but for Plum Lianna kills her instantly and then you can drop your big units. And of course, drawing a card is never bad for this deck.

## Sample Decks

Hilda (Mono)
4 Hilda (Fodlan), Soaring Free Spirit
4 Hilda (Fodlan), Little Miss Pampersome
4 Seiros, Saint who Received a Divine Revelation
4 Byleth (Male), He Who Bears the Flames Within
3 Peony, Sweet Dream-Bringing Lass
4 Sothis, The Beginning
2 Hilda (Fodlan), Ladyling of House Goneril
4 Dimitri, Awakened Savior King
2 Hapi, Karma-Burdened Valkyrie
3 Lianna, Beautiful Sunflower Princess
3 Edelgard, She Who Bares Her Fangs at the Gods
4 Byleth (Female), Young Mercenary Swordswoman (P)
4 Byleth (Male), New Professor at the Officers Academy (P4)
4 Lysithea, Little Wunderkind
MC:
1 Hilda (Fodlan), Ladyling of House Goneril