It’s come up a few times on this blog (most recently in the #15 spot on my list of most-played games), but I am a huge fan of Shadowverse. It’s a competitive trading card game with a clear anime inspiration, with a dedicated multiplayer mode but also a very extensive and story-heavy single-player campaign. It’s got sky-high production, and a ton of unique gameplay gimmicks that no other TCG game has ever really been able to capture. It’s a ton of fun.
It is also, unfortunately, shutting down permanently within the next month or so.
Yes, the reason for this is because a sequel launched, and the developers want to prioritize that sequel instead. That makes sense, I can’t pretend it doesn’t, but that still means that everything from the first game is going to be gone for good. And that’s really sad to me. It is, perhaps, the inevitable outcome for digital-only games that depend on internet servers to operate, but that doesn’t make it less sad. I’ll deeply miss all the decks and playstyles I curated in Shadowverse.
So, to try and make some of my memories of this game, its cards, and its decks just a little more permanent, I decided to throw together this Top 10 article to help immortalize it all a bit! This is very much a ‘made-for-me‘ type of article, but I hope you still enjoy the next few paragraphs of me excitedly talking about my favorite decks that I’ve made in this unforgettable game!
10) Hedonistic Dealer
This is definitely the most ‘unga bunga‘ deck I’ve ever built (if you’re not familiar, that term refers to a gameplay style that is simplistic but effective, requiring minimal taxing mental strain). This entire deck lives and dies by whether I’m able to draw the card pictured below, “Volteo, Hedonistic Dealer” by my sixth turn. If I can, I’ll probably win, and even if I don’t it’ll be really funny. If I don’t draw him, then I lose. The deck has absolutely no backup plan. I either cause everything to violently explode, or I myself am the one who explodes and withers away into dust.
9) Chess
I’ll fully admit that, when it comes to deckbuilding in trading card games, I really don’t excel at the nitty-gritty optimization. I much prefer it when there’s a clear-cut archetype that I can just kinda of copy and paste into the deck editor, do a few practice runs to learn the ins-and-outs, and then go from there. The “Chess” archetype is exactly that. You want to play a lot of “Magical Pawns”, and eventually in the later turns of the duel you’ll be able to drop your “Mystic King” onto the field to really make some huge plays. The drawback is a pretty weak first few turns, but this deck has a lot of potential when it gets the ball rolling.
8) Forest Evolve
All monster cards (known as ‘followers‘ in Shadowverse) can evolve, but each player only gets a set amount of evolve points per match. Well, there’s also cards that evolve under unique circumstances, thus avoiding having to spend a precious evolve point. This is a deck designed entirely around cards that can cheat out their evolutions, designed to overwhelm your opponent with more damage than they are prepared to handle with their own much-more-limited evolve point capabilities. Combined with a huge heavy-hitters that come out in the later turns of the duel, it’s a pretty fun deck to mess around with!
7) Rally Sword
Shadowverse, a few years into its run, introduced a mechanic known as ‘Rally‘, which is simply a counter of how many followers you’ve played in a match. The more followers you play, the more your cards will be able to use the ‘Rally‘ mechanic to pull off bonus effects. Well, it just so happens that the ‘Swordcraft‘ class of cards are good at swarming a field with weak mooks, perfect for building up that ‘Rally‘ counter. Eventually, you’ve got cards with so many bonus effects it becomes difficult to keep track of, but oh-so-fun to play with. For example, the card pictured below will summon herself for free at the end of the first turn you hit a ‘Rally‘ count of 10, immediately acting as a defensive wall who you can also expend an evolve point on to blow up your opponents best cards!
6) Lishenna
I touched on this idea earlier in this article, but I really love when I can base the theme of a deck in a TCG around a singular gimmick. And this deck revolves around “Lishenna, Omen of Destruction“. Yes, it means that this deck falters a bit if I’m not able to draw a “Lishenna“, though it is more resilient than the silly “Volteo” deck from the #10 spot on this list. Essentially, “Lishenna” puts a card in your hand that is expensive to play, but the cost goes down each time a follower dies. When you play that card, you get another card that works the same way. If you then play that one, your opponent will take 10 damage per turn…and your health bar is at 20 in Shadowverse. You can see how devastating this might be, if your opponent can’t take you down before you get both of “Lishenna“‘s special cards in play!
5) Belphomet
No Shadowverse deck will ever make you feel more powerful than playing a deck centered around this singular card. This deck is the epitome of ‘if I can just get this guy onto my field, then I’ve won the duel‘. It almost feels a bit broken/overpowered to see just how good “Belphomet, Ultimate Creator” is. Just by playing him, he immediately spawns three additional followers on your field that hurt the opponent, heal yourself, and shield you from additional effects. He’s a single card that gifts you an army, and all you had to do is play him. Not only that, but you can sacrifice other cards from you hand to him during the initial turns of the duel, meaning that he has value even from the start of a match.
4) Dragon Academy
I’m not entirely sure who came up with the idea to base a set of cards around a dragon academy, but I’m glad that someone did, because this deck is awesome! It’s an archetype comprised entirely of dragon-like humanoids playing various sports, and all of their effects scale off of one another. On top of that, they tend to have low attack but monstrous defense, so they end up being really hard for your average opponent to remove. It’s a defensive-oriented strategy that helps to keep you alive long enough to play your trump card, which is a card themed around a sports coach who has an effect to detonate your opponent for massive amounts of damage based upon the defensive stats of your field’s followers!
3) Mysteria
Continuing the academic-adjacent theme, we have another deck based around an archetype of card centered on a school, although this time more aligned with magic (though, actually, there are still dragons). There’s a ton of “Mysteria” cards, meaning that no two “Mysteria” decks will ever be exactly the same. The variety is actually pretty insane, as you can tailor a “Mysteria” deck around dealing direct damage to your opponent via spells, or through some fun joint combination attacks with your followers.
My absolute favorite thing to do, though, is base the deck around “Anne, Mysterian Prodigy“, who gets cheaper to play the more “Mysteria” cards you put onto the field, and she grants you a card called “Anne’s Sorcery”. What does “Anne’s Sorcery” do? Well, it deals direct damage to your opponent based on how many “Mysteria” cards you’ve played in a match. Considering a typical deck holds 40 cards, and your opponent’s life total can only be 20…I’m sure you can imagine that your opponent is as good as dead if you’re able to get “Anne’s Sorcery” into your hand! There’s nothing quite like a big magical fireball right to your opponent’s face!
2) Elana’s Prayer
There’s no other deck in Shadowverse that makes me feel like a worse human being than this one, but I can’t pretend that I don’t love playing this deck anyway, even if it does feel unfair to my opponent. While this deck can be a bit risky, if you make it to turn four or five, you become effectively unstoppable. There’s almost no other deck that can compare if the match goes on for that long, and it all has to do with the card pictured below, “Elana’s Prayer“.
The ability to give your followers an extra attack point and defense point when you heal yourself sounds pretty normal, I think. The trick lies in the fact that this card is permanent, and has no activation limit. If you heal yourself five times on a turn, then you’ve just given all of your followers an extra five attack and five defense. That’s insane! And did you know there’s no limit to how many “Elana’s Prayer“s you can have on your field? If you have three copies, and heal yourself five times, your followers just gained fifteen attack and defense! And that’s just on one turn! If you build your whole deck around self-healing abilities, you’ll have undefeatable followers in the blink of an eye.
1) Greenwood Guardians
The previous deck I discussed (and honestly all of the past four/five entries in general) are probably the overall best decks that I ever made in Shadowverse. And while that isn’t to say that this deck right here in the #1 slot is bad (because it isn’t, it’s quite good), I’m placing it here more because there’s no other deck that I have more fun utilizing.
From the moment this archetype of jungle-based warrior ladies debuted, I created a deck centered around it and fell in love instantly. It ticks a lot of the boxes that I’m looking for, such as being an easily-constructed deck built around a singular archetype of cards, the “Greenwood Guardians”, that has a few fun combos and a big payoff in the form of the deck’s big boss follower, “Lymaga, Forest Champion”.
See, the gimmick of this deck is that nearly all of the cards you’ll play are either a “Greenwood Guardian“, or they summon a “Greenwood Guardian” as an additional effect. And the more of those guardians you play in a match, the more bonus effects your other cards will have. It creates this big snowball effect the longer a duel goes on, especially once you’ve played your sixth “Greenwood Guardian“.
At that point, at the start of your next turn (and for every turn thereafter as long as you still have “Lymaga” in your deck) you’ll instantly summon a “Lymaga” from your deck. She has five attack, five defense, and the special ability to immediately attack your opponent directly without having to deal with the one-turn wait penalty other followers have to. The ability to just completely ambush your opponent with damage equivalent to one-forth of their total health cannot be underestimated, especially when you get another “Lymaga” on the next turn, and then a third after that. And you know what else is nice? If you draw a “Lymaga” into your hand (her effect only works if she’s in your deck), she comes with a handy ability to send herself right back into your deck and gift you a free “Greenwood Guardian” to boot!
It’s a deck that is a ton of fun, surprisingly versatile, and great at surprising your opponent. It is also, consequentially, the deck I’m going to miss the most when Shadowverse shuts down in another month or so.
But hey, that’s just my opinion!
The Contrarian Corner 