Greetings everyone! Welcome to the second part of my Ancient Alphas contender breakdown and deck building guide! We previously covered Gearwin and my recommended build and play style for her. This article will be centered around what could be Alpha Clash's biggest skill ceiling contender:
Entropy, the Progenitor of Chaos
Entropy as a contender definitely brought a chaos to my deck building! But before we get to the deck, lets find out what our contender even does
Know Thy Enemy
Entropy is a forty (yes you read that right!) health colorless contender with the sentinel trait. He hails from Zenith Prime and is a 1/0 Progenitor. Now, as you've just read, Entropy has the highest starting health on any constructed legal contender in the game. So how on earth (or Zenith Prime if you'd like) do they balance this contender out? Entropy has a static ability that reads "When this card would gain health, reduce that amount by one. You set resources facedown. (Face-down resources produce colorless.)" Now, I'm sure you're wondering how you can play any cards if your resources only produce colorless. That's were Entropy's life tax comes in to play. from the start of the game (at 40HP) he has "When you pay a cost, for each specific resource this must lose one health to treat it as colorless." This by itself is a sweet ability! not only can you play anything, you lose life equal to the pips in its cost. How is this contender not broken?!? I hear you as. Well, he has Affinity: Colorless, Which means any card that isn't colorless in his deck is limited to one copy. So you won't be able to run all the busted playsets of cards you want. This balances out Entropy quite well in my opinion. He essentially makes all colored cards in your deck unrivaled, meaning no board states with four identical cards swinging into your opponent. Entropy's second ability is equally interesting but for an entirely different reason. from twenty five health and under he gains "Counter - Attack: The attacking player puts a random card from their hand on the bottom of their deck, then draws a card.
This gets +1/+0 for each ten cards in your Banish Zone." This gives aggro decks a bit of a hard time as they will oftentimes only get one attack with a clash card before it dies to Entropy's ever growing power. Additionally, with Entropy able to attack and replace a random card from the opponent every turn means he could strip answers very quick.
Pay The Tax
With Entropy's life tax to all colored cards, you have to be careful with the amount of pips in your deck. While forty health is a lot, Entropy has zero defense on his card so can struggle against large go-wide decks and burn. However, with your ability to play anything at the cost of life, there are some strong cards you can run to protect yourself
The One Pip Wonders
These are the cards that are all-stars in the deck considering only having to lose one life for them. Cards like Haven, Bountiful Collector, Good Karma, Better Luck Next Time!, Abatement, Invigorating Elixir to fill your hand back up, and Solar Smash are excellent choices for the deck. Additionally, with everything being one copy, tutoring effects like Grant Park, Chicago are auto includes for the deck to find the exact card you need, Hidden Pathway is a "colorless" Clashground tutor as long as the portal is open, and Victory Peak can provide some well needed protection.
Two Pip Package A.K.A. "The Playmakers"
While the majority of the deck should be cheap for pips to keep as much health as you can (as regenerating health is difficult with the penalty on your contender), I found these cards to be worth their addition point of health loss.
Pestilence, Devious Servant
Pestilence is a great way to rebuild your hand if its getting low or if you have a ton of cards in hand and want to move to the offensive.
Conquest, the Undefeated
Great attacker, Incredible blocker, can stand back up for another attack or block if he survived the first one, 2/3 stat line so he's able to get some cheap pokes in, he feels super strong in general.
Kilimanjaro, Magma Guardian
I've been waiting for this card to slot in somewhere and I think it's finally his time! The main reason to run him is being able to banish a card from your oblivion at the start of your turn to have a contender lose one health. This can turn into two health if the banished card had an initial resource cost of four or more. This both fuels Entropy's twenty five ability to gain a bunch of addition power as well as fueling the colorless package we are seeing spoiled. Words of Ruin comes to mind as the best pay off so far (Be sure to check the main discord to keep up to date with all the spoilers!).
Shadowlight, Darkness Overwhelming
Another card that has mostly flown under the radar since its release, Shadowlight can turn all clash cards into 2/2's while he's in play, and for each card of your opponent's that has power or defense below their printed value, he gets an additional +1/+0. This can lead to some devastating swings if your opponent isn't careful about leaving up blockers.
Mean-Streak, Blink of an Eye
Probably one of my favorite cards in the game, Mean-Streak excels a taking out pesky clash cards without dying himself. While it's unlikely he will see enough streak counters to give your whole board a +1/+1 even, he will make back his value in eating up X/3's and X/4's for a few turns before dying to a larger clash card.
Deliverance
Do I really need to explain why it's here? Deliverance is one of the best removal cards in the game, and is well worth the two points of life lost from playing it.
Warcry, Faithful Protector
Also one of the best removal cards in the game (even post errata), Warcry can get around annoying Undisputed cards by shrinking their defense and removing them before a blocker is even declared. The defensive buff to your engaged clash cards also helps protect your board from a crack back swing or even a BOOM if you're lucky!
Who is Really Unrivaled?
With all of your colored cards being limited to one copy, Unrivaled cards don't suffer as much from their restriction. However, it can be tough deciding which one to play. My initial thought was the classic Alpha Aster, Giver of All. Reset the board and search for an Alpha and put it into play. This would allow for some higher pipped Alphas to sneak into the list only for Aster to put them into play. Additionally, not having any colored pips in his cost make him a great endgame threat. I'm still on the fence if he's worth it or not, as the Alpha package has to be large enough to account for only having one copy of each. Leading to potentially drawing the Alpha you wanted to put into play with him getting stuck in your hand. As a result, I've been using Clarity, Harbinger of Death in my deck. Her Trigger - Enter is quite strong and her static ability of being unable to be sent to oblivion while she is engaged makes her strong against removal, as well as being able to draw you cards or regain one life per turn (as long as you get an opponent's clash card into oblivion) can help out. She is three pips so she might be a high risk depending on your local meta.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Entropy is a super interesting contender to build. I'm looking forward to seeing what others in the community come up with for him! As always, I've provided a link to my deck list for the current build in testing at home with (The missing cards from the list are 3x Entropy, Blood for Power, 4x Words of Ruin, 3x Entropy's Palace, and 4x Entropy's Grasp).
https://www.deckplanet.net/alpha_clash/deck/d9dc9b43-e7d6-4e4d-803a-0a6289bd130a
Written by The Pest