Shedding Light on Prism: The Matchups

The Dorinthea matchup is a defensive race, and your typical goal of attacking with 2 Heralds must be balanced with blocking Dawnblade on others. As with Guardian and Brute, effective use of Arc Light Sentinel and Genesis can provide you with “free” turns where you take 0 damage. These cards are even more effective in this match, however; if Dorinthea attacks an Aura with her weapon, she does not gain go again from her ability, and she loses any counters she may have had on her weapon. This means that your Arc Light Sentinels are both a free turn and a reset button, making this matchup a favorable one.

Against Katsu, shutting off their Combos and the draw off their Mask of Momentum is paramount to winning this matchup. You are usually only swinging with one attack a turn until you force the Ninja’s life total to a point where they have to begin blocking. Don’t be afraid to block with two cards from hand; you want to disrupt their turns. Arcanite Skullcap helps tremendously here, blocking a few of Katsu’s Kodachi swings. Drawing Pummel is almost the same as blocking in this matchup, as it forces a discard.

This matchup is pure race, and one that you win most of the time. As long as they don’t draw the nuts against you, the downside of starting at 30 life is just too large of a detriment- Prism can consistently threaten lethal in two or three turns. The other massive boon we have against Wizard is their distinct lack of attack action cards. This makes Genesis a veritable damage-prevention machine, allowing you to make at least one Spectral Shield a turn with little effort.

As close to an auto-win matchup as possible right now. Go pure aggro here and outrace them no matter what they do. Command and Conquer breaks anything they may have set up in Arsenal. The one danger is getting hit by a Dominated Red in the Ledger; but even that won’t lose you the match, and you're running 2 Soul Shields to block that.

Dash is a deck that looks to whittle you down through pistol shots, and runs a plethora of defence reactions to cramp our style. Luckily for us, she has a distinct lack of six attack cards- usually three red Throttles and three Command and Conquers. With Pummel, we get over her defence reactions fairly handily, and our copies of Command and Conquer force non-reaction cards out of their hand or makes them block with their gear. Go for big plays, play aggressively, and you should have very few issues.

This matchup depends entirely on whether they are playing aggro or control. Against Aggro, it becomes a race to see who can force the other player to start blocking first, as that player will be putting less pressure on the other and will steadily begin losing momentum. The key focus in the mirror is blocking their Heralds of Erudition- which you do through the use of Soul Shield- and Command and Conquer. The biggest thing of note here is that cards with Phantasm cannot destroy other cards with Phantasm, which is why this matchup is such a race.

On the flip side, the control matchup is extremely favorable, as they run very few attacks that can destroy your Heralds and you also don’t care about their Auras- you outrace your opponent before they become meaningful. It should also be noted that Spectral Shield tokens just slaughter the control version of this deck, as Luminaris gives them go again as well, and they can be used to destroy Aura at the end of your turn.

Bravo is Prism’s second hardest matchup (behind Brute/Shadow Brute), due to the high density of six attack Crushes and defence reactions. Often, you’ll do extraordinarily little damage with your Heralds, making it difficult to put cards into soul. To provide an alternative to this, you instead run multiple non-phantasm attack cards that Bravo is forced to block traditionally. Making effective use of Arc Light Sentinel and Genesis is essential to winning, as they can essentially give you a free turn. While the matchup is incredibly one sided, it is possible to win with efficient use of your equipment, correct card sequencing, and a fair amount of luck.

The one card in the deck that turns all of this on its head and allows you to play hyper aggressively as you would in any other matchup is Great Library of Solana. If you draw this card before you're forced to start blocking in a game, it gives you far more freedom in how you play your turns. Footsteps are easier to pay for, and you can begin swinging the matchup in your favor by pressuring multiple cards in Bravo's hand, relegating him to swinging with Anothos.

This matchup is remarkably similar to Bravo, except that the majority of their cards are six attack, meaning they can single-card block a Herald swing twice in a turn and still deal damage on the return swing. This renders half your deck impotent, and makes this as close to an automatic loss as possible. The matchup is still winnable, but it takes drawing an early Great Library and, in turn, drawing into more of your non-Phantasm attacks and meaningful Auras. Save Dream Weavers for a Herald of Erudition paired with Pummel; also watch for opportunities to roll over from a Herald attack into Command and Conquer or Enlightened Strike. If you manage to chain the former play into the latter, you can gain massive tempo. Big plays around your non phantasm cards are how you win here.

(Everything that was said here is also applicable to the Levia matchup, they run the same density of six attack cards, and they set up big Bellow turns. Play defensively against Brute as you draw towards Library and look to do chip damage with your Auras and non-Phantasm cards.)