Feed the Beast in an Eggshell
I am a purist when it comes to some things. I like to drink black coffee, eat plain cheese pizza, and when I build 4clans decks, I like to try and run 2 copies of every card so that my deck only consists of 20 different cards. Is this a good habit? Probably not, but when I look at the list for Feed the Beast it hurts that purist nature inside of me with 22 singletons out of 40 cards! Lets look at the list:
Leeann’s Comet – 2
Goblin’s Cleaver – 2
Avian Mother – 2
The Shrike – 2
The Multibear – 2
Water Nymph – 2
Rampage – 2
Sea Horsicorn – 2
Mystical Meats Man
Stomp
Terrifying Minotaur
Shenran the Infinite Dragon
Dino Breath
Transmorph: Battle Boar (found in the Feed the Beast pre-construct deck)
Transmorph: Battle Sloth
Transmorph: Jujitsu Fish (found in the Feed the Beast pre-construct deck)
Transmorph: Mangy Goat
Transmorph: Battle Bunny
Transmorph: Deadly Llama (found in the Feed the Beast pre-construct deck)
They Got Better Food
Pea of Power
Home Brew
Hopeful Owl
Intimidation
Owl Guardian
Piedmont Dragon
Fire Snake
Deadly Mantis
Eyeball for All
Spinach
You might notice that I didn’t put them in alphabetical order, and you might think “Oh I thought you said you were a purist, a purist wouldn’t hav-” and before you do, I copied the list exactly as it appears on the card that came with the pre-con. I wish I could tell you that there was some clever explanation behind the order of the cards, or maybe some hidden detail or lore behind the seemingly random order that the cards were listed in. There is not. There is no reason behind the order of the cards. This is nonsensical chaos what we are dealing with in 4clans.
Feed the Beast is a deck about turning your opponent’s warriors into cute animals and then killing those cute animals in order to increase the level of your own warriors. This is done by combining the Transmorph cards with blessing cards like Goblin’s Cleaver and Mystical Melon Man.
The Transmorph cards are all curses that when placed on a warrior will transfor- I mean transmorph that warrior into the animal specified on the card and place them in the animal clan group. Most of these curses will shuffle back into your library once the warrior is killed, allowing you to reuse them throughout the game. Unfortunately, these curses do have a maximum level of warrior that you can target with them, so you can’t just transmorph all of your opponent’s biggest warriors. There is also The Multibear which transmorphs an entire clan group into one big animal, allowing you to wipe out entire clan groups and gain huge bonuses with the Cleaver or Mystical Merchant Man.
The list contains 11 cards that turn warriors into animals, and only 3 ways to cash in on the combo, so the wonderful creators were kind enough to include two copies of the legendary Water Nymph which lets us search our spell deck for any card and place it in our spell log for later use. With the
Transmorph cards shuffling back into our library and the blessings being reusable effects, we either search for a blessing or find a way to protect our powerhouse animal killer.
Our options for protection are
Sea Horsicorn, Owl Guardian, and Avian Mother. Sea Horsicorn, much like unicats as another blantant example of unicorning (please don’t google that), is a great way to protect your warrior as it can even allow you to hold the warrior despite losing a battle. Owl Guardian and Avian Mother should be
played after you have already played your blessings since they will prevent you from casting your own direct spells on that clan group. In addition to Avian Mother, there is the Piedmont Dragon conjure spell, which is a warrior that grows to the level of the clan group it is in when you play her at
the beginning of each spell phase. Piedmont Dragon is a good backup if you are not able to pull off your Cleaver or Medicine Man combo.
The last card I would like to spotlight in the list is Leeann’s Comet, which deals 10 combo damage for each curse and blessing on the table. Nearly half of this deck is either a blessing or a curse, so just off of your own spells you are likely to get decent combo damage. Leeann’s Comet is a good card
to keep in the list if you decide to modify the deck. There is a good selection of other kills spells for you to try as well, but the Comet has the best potential for killing those high level warriors that are too big for your transmorph effects.
Feed the Beast is a good starting point, but was not designed to meet the full potential of the strategy. I would suggest adding a second copy of Mystical Meats Man and two copies of Perfect Timing, which lets you search for and play any spell from your library or burnt pile so that you have another way
to search for your two pay-offs. I also suggest swapping out Stomp and Intimidation for second copies of the Transmorph cards. I would not necessarily run 2 copies of EVERY Transmorph card since they shuffle back into your library so often. It might be best to keep your total Transmorph card count at rougly 1/3rd of your deck, or 13/40 cards. You may also consider these warrior curses:
· Broken Finger Nail (-10)
· Spilled Cofee(-15)
· Out of T.P.(-20)
These curses synergize with Leeann’s Comet, shuffle back into your library when they are discarded, and shrink problematic conjures or clan leaders low enough for you to transmorph them. There is also the clan blessing Beautiful Roids which sets the level of every warrior in a clan group equal to the highest level warrior in that group, and the clan curse Mini Size which does the same, but for the lowest level of the group. Both of those options are good considerations for this deck. If you play this deck and you find that you are consistently able to build a large warrior with blessings, then I suggest swapping some of your kill spells out for Big Ego which allows you to pick a warrior and do combo damage equal to the level of that warrior, and Ahmad the Odd which is a conjure spell whose level is always equal to the biggest warrior on the table.
That’s the deck! I will leave the rest to you all to tune the list to fit your own playstyle. I also encourage tuning your decks to counter how your friends build their decks but that is something I will have to write about in a future article. Thanks for reading and exploring the game with me.
Until next time!
Logan LaBoube