Mateo, Blessed Child

A deck of Blessed tokens (), and some unassuming Curses.

Uses Latest Taboo List 2020

Main Object

Try to mantain the perpetual flow of tokens, using Keep Faith and Tempt Fate, whilst recurring them at the Shrine of the Moirai. Note that both Fortunes are and the recurrence provided by the Shrine is also , this is an attempt at making the engine less time consuming to set up. Bring your Holy Rosary, that one action for that sacred potential every round is of great help. All of this to nurture the way to Blessing of Isis, Rite of Sanctification, A Watchful Peace and Radiant Smite. Furthermore, the deck fulfills Decent Fight and Support roles.

Shrine of the Moirai

• What I found is that it is impossible to mitigate all the bad sides of playng with tokens if you are Mateo and/or if you are the only one playing that arquetype at the table.
• Blessed Blade (just terrible in Mateo, without support of a bunch of other cards), Book of Psalms (takes away 5 actions for 8 , isnt that almost 2 turns gone?) and Spirit of Humanity (deals damage and horror. It can heal, but one round later and at the cost of ; Tempt Fate does the same but on the same round and with card draw as bonus),
• I'd argue drawing from the Encounter deck is the least-worst in most cases for Mateo. Take this one-sided assesment with a grain of salt.

The 5 bonus XP

• 2x Holy Rosary + 1x Radiant Smite
• There is an argument to be made for Sacred Covenant before the 2nd copy of Rosary, it is up to preference.

Upgrades - 29-30 xp

In this build, you will need to save 1xp after some scenarios to pay for the Spell upgrades made by Arcane Research

First Upgrades - 8xp

1. Sacred Covenant
2. 2x Shrine of the Moirai (cut: 2x Perception)

Following Upgrades in any order - 17xp

1. 2x Blur
2. 2x Favor of the Sun
3. 2x Blessing of Isis
4. Eye of the Djinn
5. 1x A Watchful Peace

Upgrades by Arcane Research (after each Scenario) - 4-5xp

1. Shrivelling (3)
2. Shrivelling (3)
3. Azure Flame (3)
4. Azure Flame (3)
5. Recharge (2) or Alter Fate(3) or Storm of Spirits(3)
6. Shrivelling (5)
7. Shrivelling (5)

Cards to cut

1. 2x Beloved
2. 1x Spectral Razor
3. 2x Sword Cane
4. 2x Guts
5. 2x Ward of Radiance

Managing the deck

Mulligan

• 1.A Fighting Spell; 2. Keep Faith or Tempt Fate; 3. Holy Rosary
• Still important: 4.Shrine of the Moirai. 5. Economy card
• Keep an eye: Scroll of Secrets and Eye of the Djinn are good too.

Fighting Role

• The role you can accomplish at the very start
• The Arcane Slot Spells are meant to be upgraded thus the main reason Arcane Research is in the deck. Without de + bonus, they become too unreliable to be used late in the campaign.
• In that note, Sword Cane becomes eventually bad with 4 , and should be replaced.
• Blur: the card I chose in lack of a better fighting Spell as a 5th and 6th Enemy Dealer, 5 is considerably better than 4, it doesn't lose a charge in failure and gives the action used back.
• You can try 4 or 5 Arcane Slot Spells only, but be careful not to feel as a Guardian with no Weapon -> In hard Mullingan, chance to be in opening hand: 4 copies: 78%, 5 copies: 86%, 6 copies: 90%.
• Depending on campaign and playstyle, you can choose instead: Wither (4) or Armageddon (4)

Support Role

• Shrine of the Moirai, Rite of Sanctification, Ward of Radiance, Alter Fate and A Watchful Peace

Cluever Role

• Possible in mid to late game, when Olive is in play and there is a decent amount of in the bag
• Possible with Eye of the Djinn
• The choice to bring Fight Spell Assets instead of Rite of Seeking, Clairvoyance or Sixth Sense is based on the fact that an action for a clue is more valuable than an action for a damage. So in the instances you are left with many tokens in the bag and want to use your Olive, your Djinn or your Sun to succeed the basic action it doesn't feel like a complete worthless skill test.

The Engine

• Keep Faith + Tempt Fate + Holy Rosary
• Shrine What to bring back: Bring either KF or TF plus anything (Ward of Radiance, Alter Fate and A Watchful Peace are good candidates to continuosly mitigate the draw of encounter cards, Radiant Smite, Favor of the Sun, Shrivelling, Azure Flame)

Drawing tokens

• Olive McBride: The best way to draw a from the bag. The chance of drawing at least 1 among 3 tokens drawn, depending on the total number of tokens in bag is the following: 5 = 50 - 60 % // 6 = 55 - 66 % // 7 = 60 - 70 % // 8 = 64 - 74 % // 9 = 67 - 77 % // 10 = 70 - 80 %

• This is 35 to 40 % increase in the chance of normally drawing the token.

• That said, Olive is good when the engine is already running in mid to late game.

• Favor of the Sun: guaranteed token draw.

Cards that depend on the tokens

• 2x Rite of Sanctification: economy gold, and the one card that is best at Early Game.

• 2x Blessing of Isis: This is the main card for which we are doing this Bless Archetype = EXTRA ACTIONS + AUTOMATIC SUCCESS. Olive + Favor of the Sun should make this trigger enough times to make it worth it.

• 1x A Watchful Peace: mitigates the use of Shrine. Not to be used in true solo.

• 1x Radiant Smite: To fight bosses.

• 2x Favor of the Sun: combos well with Isis, if alone it does fine in Investigation skill tests.

• 2x Olive McBride: previously talked about.

• Ten seems right. I tried not to fill the deck with too much or too few cards that depend on the presence of tokens, Ten seems right.

• While upgrading, I kept from 8 to 11 cards in this category.

• Beloved: Worse than Blessing of Isis, would cut it before Ward of Radiance.

• Ward of Radiance: Can be played with 6+ blessed tokens in bag, for a chance of at least 70% of hitting. Chosen over Ward of Protection in hopes of Recurring it with Shrine without de horror penalty.

• Eye of the Djinn: Doesn't quite fit in this category since it does well with or without tokens.

The Tokens Mitigation

• Very indirect: Relies on drawing tokens with Olive, failing and if any tokens got in the mix, saving them with the Sacred Covenant.
• Eye of the Djinn: makes good use of them.
• If you chose to play with less than 6 Arcane Slot Spells there is a place for: Harmony Restored that might be better than Favor of the Moon in this build, since you are kind of Tempting Fate quite a bit.

Final Thoughts

• The percentages shown are not accurate, just an estimate made on the odds calculator found in mtgnexus.com/tools/drawodds/ .
• Notoriously, Isis doesn't work without either Olive McBride or Favor of the Sun in play, so I advise not rushing it into play or into upgrade.
• I persisted with the Scroll of Secrets choice to get some much needed cards and make the combos work better.
• If you earned less than 30xp, I would give up on A Watchful Peace. Alternatively, one can choose to play with only one Isis in the deck, since it is quite unreliable. (Maybe 1 is the right number, who knows).

This deck is too much fun to play with. Putting a twist in the so common stacking archetype, gaining extra actions with , overkilling bosses, being economy golden, messing up encouter cards and recurring.