Exalt Chrom (B08)

## Overview

Written by: Dovahkiin

One of the strongest decks in the game, Exalt is a deck built around Class Changing multiple units in the same turn both for insane value from the Class Change (or CC as I will be calling it) itself (B22 Sigurd and Robin F 5/4 being the main ones) but also by giving you the ability to deploy much more Deployment Cost worth of cards each turn compared to how many Bonds you actually have. While he has a bit of a rough early game, the payoff is basically playing a different game all together compared to your opponents.

## Gameplan

Your main goal is to simply survive until turn 5 when you can start throwing your seemingly endless stream of units at your opponent until they die while you get to largely ignore what they are deploying to do the same.

The early game usually consists of trying to promote into Chrom 3/2 or 4/3 (if you can do both even better) and survive until you can get going. While your deck has many low costs, you don’t typically want to deploy them early as they have much more value once you do get to main promo. The exceptions to this are Julia 1, which can be played into the backline against decks that lack access to it, or if you simply need to clear enemy units and Chrom can't get the job done himself.

In general before you promote you want to spend all of your time clearing enemies over hitting their Main Character if given the choice, but either way you typically want to be attacking every turn to fill your Retreat Area.

Starting turn 4 and onwards is when the deck really gets going. While in some match-ups you may want to promote into another copy of Chrom 4/3 to get the CC trigger again and because Exalt is a deck that can get away with promoting late with a 1 cost on the same turn, you want to just go full promo 9/10 times. Best case scenario you also have a copy of Sigurd 0 which you play alongside your Chrom on turn 4 and use Chrom to CC it into a Sigurd 5/4 to get some ramp, another unit to hit with, and potentially use the buff Sigurd offers to keep yourself alive.

Turn 5 and beyond is both when things get easy and much more difficult. From here on out you want to be deploying multiple units a turn, so long as you are careful not to completely run out of face-up Bonds for Julia 5/4. Sigurd is free, Robin lets you ignore their board and swing all face all the time, and Julia helps keep your bonds up to keep going. The hard part of the deck is now that you have so many options of what to do, what order to do them in, and heavy Bond management, it can get overwhelming. The more you play the deck, the more you get to know the flow for late game play.

## Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths:

* Ability to tempo out more units than almost any other deck in the game
* Extremely hard to stall out as all of his units draw a card to replace themselves on CC
* Ability to keep up pressure while also clearing the opponent’s board with Robin, so good into other midrange/control decks with similar gameplans
* Simply the most privileged deck in the game, not having to worry about things like clearing board/backline, needing to hit large numbers, and in general care about what your opponent is doing because your deck can and will play Solitaire better than theirs can.

Weaknesses

* Poor early game, if you don't have a bridge you are basically dead against anything with pressure
* Sometimes just loses to itself, this usually happens by just not having the right cards in your Retreat to CC and/or drawing all of your 5 costs instead of the 1s and 0, “wrong half of the deck” problems if you will
* Can have a very hard time against hate cards/cards that disrupt your gameplan. The main culprits are cards that can flip your Bonds face-down, cards that stop destruction skills like Hinoka 4/3, ways to repeatedly re-shuffle your Retreat for you like Saias 5/4, and worst case, the combination of Plumeria 2 and ??? 3/2 all but shuts off your deck completely.

## Key Cards

The most important card in the deck, he is simply free in every sense of the word. The 0 cost lets you deploy anything besides it as it costs nothing. When you CC him, you get to Bond a card from Retreat which, if that card is Seliph 5/4 like you want, effectively lets you get two face-up Bonds to replace the two you flipped to CC him with Chrom. Lastly because he was CCed, you draw a card for that to replace the card you placed from hand. On top of all of this, he is also your best tool against aggro decks/decks trying to close the game, letting you flip Bonds to make Chrom bigger and harder to hit, deflecting that aggro away from Chrom into Sigurd, which you are happy to let die because that means you can do it all over again.

The second most important card in the deck that gives it that amazing privilege it's known for. While it doesn't recoup any bonds like his other two main deploys, she makes up for that by potentially destroying your opponent’s entire board whenever you CC into her. Because she counts both herself and Chrom as CCed allies, she will destroy 2 units at minimum, but because you want to be deploying and CCing multiple units per turn, that number is often 3 or 4, a number of units most decks can’t get over in one turn. In addition to that, her Orb skill lets you get more cards into your Retreat while filtering cards you don’t need until later (mostly Chroms) into your Orbs. Also she can buff to hit very large things but you really only do that in “ending the game” situations, just the buff from Chrom is usually enough.

The third mainstay deploy of Chrom, though probably the least important of the core. Her main value actually comes in 3 forms. Firstly, she is able to effectively unflip Bonds, both on the turn you CC into her making her effectively only cost 1 Bond to CC with Chrom, and every turn after she is alive, making her one of the best cards you have to just play without CCing her. Secondly, both with her 1 cost before you CC and her 5/4 after, she is able to fill your Retreat very nicely to make the deck function much better, getting high costs out of hand, putting Seliphs that Sigurd bonded back into Retreat to bond him again, stuff like that. Thirdly, and most obviously, she hits big numbers, letting the deck hit almost anything in the game without expending resources on a turn to turn basis.

Have mentioned him before a few times but he is the card that lets Sigurd be as broken as he is while also occasionally getting you more value with Julia. You almost never deploy him in most games, he is just here for his skill 3, though in games that go very late, being able to deploy him from hand or with Leif 5/4 and pick up a bunch of bonds can close out the match.

He is mostly here to get Seliph 5/4s out of your hand for extra unflip value and is usually only run as a 2 of. Once you get to 8 or more bonds however, he can be a potent finisher to get Sigurd and Julia back from your Retreat by discarding the second copy of Leif, something you can set up turns prior with Sigurd CC.

The last card I would say is an auto-include in every build of Exalt. She doesn’t seem like much but when you are ramping with Sigurd so much, you get to high bond counts fast, and because all of your units can be discounted by playing the 1 costs, squeezing in a 3 cost alongside them is pretty easy. Also taking into account that Julia 5/4 is filtering cards in and out of your bonds, you often have a wide variety of good cards to get back, and after about 7 Bonds, Chrom doesn't need any more most of the time.

The most common flex card played in the deck, with or without Henry 1’s. Acts as a finisher for the deck, letting you discard your opponent’s hand, both with skill 1 as you CC your other units, and skill 2 to get the last bit, ensuring they have no evades in hand. Also a good turn 3 play if you have both a Henry 1 and 3/2.

### Options for Flex Spots

* Plumeria 2 (B21)
* Frederick 1 and 4/3 (B22)
* Deirdre 1 and 4/3 (B06)
* Alfonse X (B22)
* Edain 3/2 (B19)
* Nanna 5/4 (B10)
* Gregor 2 (B01)
* Arthur 3/2 (B08)
* Sigurd 1 (B06)
* Tiki 1 and 5/4 (B08 & B11)
* Robin(F) 4/3 (B08)
* Lewyn 0/0 (B19)
* Robin(M) 4/3 (B14)
* Robin(M) 1 (B04)
* Any other colorless tech card such as:
	+ Veronica 3 (B16)
	+ Mirabilis 0 (B22)
	+ Freyr 0 (B22)

## Tips/Rulings

* You can still CC 5 costs with another 5 cost if you haven’t CCed them before
* If you use Julia 5/4’s skill 1 with 2 or less cards if you deck, you lose Bonds, so watch your deck size
* NEVER play Nowi 3 before you promote as her skill 1 is not optional
* When you CC a unit, you treat it as a new card. So for example if you CC a Julia 5 into another Julia 5 after she has used her skill 1, she loses all the buffs she has gained, but is also able to use skill 1 again.
* If you Level Up a unit you have already CCed back into a 1 cost, Chrom is able to CC them again. Most useful for when you want to use Robin again but they didn't kill your last Robin

## Sample Decks

Standard Exalt Chrom
4 Chrom, Sacred Sovereign of Hope
4 Chrom, Sealed Paladin
4 Chrom, Ever-Just Prince (RP)
4 Robin (Female), Tactician Bearing a Spectrum of Strategies+
4 Sigurd, A Soul Who Lived for Love
4 Sigurd, Holy Honor-Imparting Knight
4 Robin (Female), The Exalt's Other Half (P)
4 Julia, Heiress of the Will of Light
2 Leif, The Future Sage-Lord+
4 Julia, Shining Maiden of Saintly Lineage
4 Seliph, Savior of Light+
3 Nowi, Eternal Youth
4 Henry, Smiling Sorcerer
1 Chrom, Enthusiastic Prince
MC:
1 Chrom, Branded Prince (P)