Calling Portland Top 16 Tournament Review: Aurora

Introduction

Last weekend I played in Flesh and Blood’s 50th Calling at World Tour Portland hosted by FaB Foundry. Everyone in our group, soon to officially be called the Cold Foil Cartel, had an absolute blast playing Commoner, Classic Constructed (CC), and even team sealed! To date it was truly one of my favorite weekends involving Flesh and Blood, and it couldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for my amazing friends and community members. I could write forever about the first steps we took into the convention center, frantically gathering our cards to play in the Commoner event to kick off the weekend, immediately jumping into the Classic Constructed event after, watching my friend play a crazy game as Enigma vs. a Sandscour Azalea who would later top 8 the Calling, and the Dim sum restaurant that was so good we had to try it twice. But those experiences are for a future post, and the kinds of details that I want to keep a record of at future events to create better articles for. Instead, this one will focus on my performance at the Calling with Aurora, why I chose to play her, and considerations for next time.

Why Aurora?

Early in my CC testing I figured out that, despite my past performances with him, I didn’t want to play Kayo. I really like him but after testing against Florian and Aurora, I knew he was no longer the competitor that he was in the Spring (he’ll be back). So, I looked at my other options. Dash I/O got wrecked by the High Octane ban, and while I knew that wouldn’t be the last we’d see of her, I wasn’t going to be the one to figure the new deck out (shout out to Thaminda Edirisooriya for being someone who DID put in the work!). So, I landed on Aurora. What ended up convincing me was brewing the deck with my friend and fellow Cold Foil Cartel (CFC) member Xander and watching him go 6-0 at a ProQuest I was judging. Another friend and CFC member, Dexter also managed to top 8 that event with the exact same 80 cards. So, I knew Aurora was a blast to play, and was clearly capable of doing well under the right circumstances. Then, Mercy Bickell showed the whole world how true it was by piloting Aurora to second place at the World Championship in Osaka. So I felt confident that Aurora could take me places. The two weekends of testing I did with my team gave me the confirmation I needed, even after losing to Nuu a few times while listening to some poorly sung karaoke at the bar.

Metagame

The metagame in Portland was a weird, lopsided version of what I expected. I thought Enigma and Aurora were going to compete for most represented heroes since Dash I/O lost High Octane, but instead Aurora was by far the most represented hero, followed by Viserai and Nuu! I had planned for the Mistveil heroes and the mirror, but that Viserai representation definitely threw a wrench into things.

Card Choices

There are a ton of cards in Aurora that exist in the deck because they are the best at what they do. Some are obvious, like Arc Lightning or Electromagnetic Somersault, while others require some play experience to understand why they are staples (looking at you, Second Strike). For the sake of brevity, I am going to compare my Calling deck list to Mercy Bickell’s Worlds deck, and just go over the differences. Starting with my new inclusions and ending with my cuts. Starting with my mainboard, the only difference between Mercy’s list and mine is Blast to Oblivion. This is a card I fell in love with in Aurora very quickly. On its face, the card seems like it should only really be amazing in Oscilio, but I think it has a lot of value in Aurora, especially since she runs so few blues. The main purpose of Blast to Oblivion in the deck is to recycle our Channel Lightning Valley (CLV) so that we don’t have to rely on pitching lightning cards for Lightning Flow. One issue I have had with CLV in the deck is it’s difficult to make it more than just a cycled card into an extra drawn card on the next turn before it dies. While this is fine, the card’s ceiling is insane if it lasts more than two turns, and I wanted to make this happen as often as possible. Blast to Oblivion gave me the tools to do this. It was visibly frustrating for my opponents when my CLV would stick around for two turns, then they’d see me play Blast, Lightning Press it or play a Sigil of Solace, and then put the CLV that they expected to leave play on that turn just get placed into my arsenal ready for use on the following turn.

From there, the rest of the differences are found in my sideboard choices:

Given that my expectations were Enigma, Zen, Nuu, and the mirror, I made some adjustments to my deck to try and address these heroes. With blue Count Your Blessings (CYB) banned, I expected some CYB decks to linger but for its representation to be significantly reduced. So, I looked at Mercy Bickell’s deck and decided I was going to cut Poison the Well in hopes of finding a more holistic approach to dealing with CYB decks.

After some testing against CYB Enigma and stock Florian, I decided the answer was Remembrance. The idea being that I could recur Arc Lightnings in the late game to try and finish things off once I was low on resources. I liked this choice until I got to Portland and realized the decks playing CYB were mostly Nuu, where I feel that Remembrance doesn’t perform.

Another addition I made was Vaporize//Shock. This change didn’t come until the weekend prior, when I read it for the 6th time since release and finally understood what it said. The whole time, I thought arcane damage was necessary for it to destroy anything. Which felt silly vs. heroes like Enigma whose auras all have ward. When I realized that it could destroy 0 cost auras, such as Channel Lightning Valley, Malefic Incantation, Essence of Ancestry: Body, and Restless Coalescence, I was confident it would perform. Given that Aurora and Enigma were what I expected to play against the most, this card suddenly felt like a slam dunk for the deck, and it really was! Given the newly released Jarl deck, and the fact that we’ve already seen many ways in which the new Draconic heroes will be relying on auras in Hunted, I believe this card will become a staple in Aurora sideboards moving forward.

Lastly, I decided to include two copies of Snag to hedge my bets vs. Nuu. I haven’t felt like the matchup is particularly bad for Aurora, but I knew Nuu would be present, and I decided I’d rather have the tech for her than not.

Now the cuts:

To make room for Blast to Oblivion I decided to cut Lightning Surge. Many people have questioned this choice, including myself, but I think I am happy with it. My issue with Lightning Surge largely has to do with it being a 2 block while (in my eyes) rarely having enough upside. It’s rare that I would rather arsenal it if I could attack instead. When I did arsenal it, most times I had the Embodiment of Lightning for the next turn anyway. It’s very possible I come back around on Lightning Surge before Calling: Memphis, but it won’t come at the cost of Blast to Oblivion. The ceiling of CLV lasting as long as it does thanks to Blast is worth the occasional times I have missed out on arsenaling a free go again for the next turn. Not to mention times where Blast to Oblivion has destroyed Azalea tokens, threatened my Zen opponent out of creating a Zen State, and randomly cleared an embodiment of lightning my Aurora opponent was relying on.

I’ve already mentioned why I cut Poison the Well in the Remembrance section, so I won’t go much further here. It just does not feel as effective against 6 CYB, and honestly the card feels bad to play anyway. It’s probably a skill issue, but I really do not like how clunky it feels.

Lastly, Warmonger’s Diplomacy. I chose to cut this card because I didn’t expect many Azaleas, and Viserai has become much more resilient to it thanks to the powerful cards he received in Rosetta. Viserai still doesn’t like Warmonger’s, but it didn’t feel like the silver bullet it was before. Furthermore, at World’s Warmonger’s made a lot of sense to me because of its application against any Dash I/O who wants to take advantage of Cerebellum Processor. Since I felt like that deck wouldn’t have a significant metagame share with High Octane gone, I didn’t want to spend tech slots on her either. In the results section you will see why I regret not playing Warmonger’s, but stand by my justification given the predicted metagame.

Results

Here’s a brief report of how each round went, mostly from memory but also from notes I wrote to some friends shortly after each day of the event:

Round 1 Win vs. Azalea - Lost the die roll, went 2nd.

She hit me with 5 arrows over the course of the game putting me to 1 life with the 5th one. 4 of these 5 arrows had dominate so I had no choice but to play out tempo lines and hope I could keep pace. I largely wasn’t, until a huge Burn Up//Shock turn that evened the game up, and forced her to block after drawing a poor hand. The final turn was 4 attacks of 4 go again, which was just enough to get over her blocks with both of us at 1 life.

Round 2 Loss vs. Viserai - Lost the die roll, went 2nd.

On turn 3 he sent Mordred Tide -> Malefic Incantation with 3 chain links to follow it. Then did the same thing again on turn 4. I didn’t block early enough with my armor, but I think I was cooked either way in this game.

Round 3 Win vs. Enigma - Won the die roll, went 1st.

This game was SUPER close! I played to my combo with Crown of Dominion and Aether Ironweave, and brought her from 34 to 14 very early on. Unfortunately, she had a Miragai to follow up which managed to live for 3 turns. Eventually I cleared it, but she got a ton of value. We ended up at 1 to 1 in life totals, and she popped her Calming Gesture to force a card out of my hand and took back the tempo. On the following turn, she plays a Waxing Vengeance which I managed to force her to clear by playing out a Restless Coalescence and moving his counter. She then swings with Restless Coalescence but not before I drew my second copy of Vaporize//Shock and used it to destroy the aura and stop go again from resolving. I killed her on the crackback. This game was easily the highlight of my event. My opponent was fantastic throughout and we both literally SCREAMED when the Vaporize came down at the end.

Round 4 Win vs. Prism - Lost the die roll, went 1st.

I drew a pretty nasty hand out the gate, resolving a CLV and drawing thanks to a hit off a Lightning Press, while also pitching a lightning card to keep the CLV around and arsenaling. My poor opponent played out an Erase Face, pitching Light of Sol and whiffing on the trigger. Then passed activating her equipment showing two figments in her hand. The game ended pretty quickly from here, given that I was able to have a set up turn AND tempo.

Round 5 Win vs. Aurora - Won the die roll, went 2nd.

This game was super tight, and ended in 1 to 1 life totals. Vaporize//Shock was amazing here as I was able to vaporize a CLV before my opponent could get a card off of it. On the last turn, my opponent’s singular card was Arc Lightning while I had no AB, but I had drawn a Sigil of Solace AND a Burn Up//Shock so I was able to gain life and kill her in response to playing the card.

Round 6 Win vs. Zen - Won the die roll, went 2nd.

My opponent was playing the Runaways Zen list with Tide Flippers. I managed to draw Flicker Wisp and Arc Lightning together before he could transcend, which was a ton of value early on in the game. It was still extremely close coming down to 1 to 1 where he was playing out a Chase the Tail combo turn that would have given him total tempo and probably won him the game, but to do this he had to attack with his Tiger Taming Khakkhara which meant he had no resources and I was able to use Sigil of Suffering to finish him off.

Round 7 Loss vs. Viserai - Won the die roll, went 1st.

My opponent was completely in control this entire game. I felt like I was trying to pressure but constantly staved off by his defensive cards, while he still put out decent output. On turn 5 I had a hand where my only choice was to use my Lightning Greaves for action points in order to gain tempo. My opponent ended up going down to 1 life but had his third copy of Revel in Runeblood which let him create enough Runechants to kill me while I had no way to prevent them.

Day 2, going into it 5-2. Meaning I need to 5-0 to top 8:

Round 8 Win vs. Kayo - Won the die roll, went 2nd.

We fought back and forth for tempo, but I ended up getting there thanks to a block 6 with Electromagnetic Somersault into swing 11 on my turn with a Gone in a Flash and Electrostatic Discharge.

Round 9 Win vs. Aurora - Lost the die roll, went 1st.

Opponent saw early Arc Lightnings which were painful, but I had good turns too, especially with Burn Up//Shock. Ended up on the last turn with four 4-attacks and CLV in play. CLV drew another 4 go again attack so I threatened 20 damage that turn and got her for exactly enough damage through blocks from hand. This one really could have gone either way.

Round 10 Win vs. Aurora - Lost the die roll, went 1st.

I was able to play out a Flicker Wisp + Arc Lightning combo early to gain tempo. At one point I ended up taking 13 damage down to 2 life so that I could play out Ravenous Rabble for 4 -> Entwine Lightning and playing 2 Lightning Presses on the Entwine for the win.

Round 11 Loss vs. Azalea - Lost the die roll, went 2nd.

This was the top 8 Azalea on Sandscour Greatbow (Super sweet deck btw). Our game was close, despite her seeing all 3 of her Fate Foreseens at great times (which in fairness is trivial to do against Aurora) and played out 3 Red in the Ledgers as well as a dominated Judge, Jury, Executioner. Those bought her enough time to play out a Murkmire Grapnel for 14 with dominate while I was at 5 life and 1 armor left. This game was a bummer. I felt like I didn’t see my sideboard cards and really couldn’t do much about what happened, but I think if I had Warmonger’s I would have had a chance at getting tempo and maybe getting there. It is really hard to tell when I look back, and my opponent was certainly skilled, so I don’t feel awful about the loss.

Round 12 Win vs. Florian - Won the die roll, went 2nd. Sadly, I got IP 2’d here for being a minute late, but it is what it is. At this point, I knew I was out of the running for top 8 but still wanted to try and place as well as possible. I got my combo together by turn 5 and followed it up with enough pressure that my opponent wasn’t able to keep up. It wasn’t a terribly exciting game, but my opponent and I had a great conversation that reminded me to appreciate the social aspect of these events.

Analysis

I ended the event going 9-3 at 15th place overall. While I would have loved to top 8, I am super happy with my list. Assuming Cindra doesn’t have some insanely broken stuff, I am pretty confident I will end up on Aurora in Memphis. She has tools to answer the new Draconic heroes (excited to vape some auras!), she’s a TON of fun, and I don’t expect the rest of the meta to shift too far beyond what I prepared for. Ultimately, I am really proud of how this year has gone for myself and my team and am looking forward to 2025. We are on track for a top 8 showing next year! Assuming life things go well in the next few weeks, I will be sure to write some articles sharing our progress as we develop our team as well as our impressions as new cards get revealed for the next set!