The Showstopper (Part 2)

Look to play defensive. Try to set up Mangle to kill their Scabskin Leathers once they don’t have a lot of armor left to block your attacks. If you have a Pummel on hand, throw it on top of Mangle, as Reckless Swing is often the only defense reaction that Brute plays. Taking away Scabskin Leathers means Rhinar will only be able to come in with one attack per turn, unless they have a Pulping/one of the other few cards that has go again intrinsically.

Store your defense reactions in arsenal so that Rhinar can’t intimidate them away.

You'll find some repeated advice here from the Rhinar matchup, but the difference between these two Brutes isn't substantial enough to significantly change your approach.

Levia isn’t largely represented in the CC meta, but you will run into her from time to time. Look to play defensive. You're still going to Try to setup Mangle to kill their Scabskin Leathers (if they run it), but you'll have to wait for her to burn some armor first- especially Carrion Husk, which is fantastic for mitigating one of our huge hits.

If you have a Pummel on hand, throw it on top of Mangle as Reckless Swing is often the only defense reaction that Brute plays. Taking away Scabskin Leathers means Levia has less sources of go again.

Continue to play defensively until Levia has depleted her armor and has built up a massive blood debt. Then do something to disable her ability to meet the criteria for blood debt- usually, this comes in the form of Crippling Crush.

It’s the mirror. Play proactively and try to anticipate your opponent’s crush attacks, stowing away big defense reactions in arsenal to get around dominate. Anothos for 6 and Pummel will be your primary sources of damage, until you can get to a place where you are likely to push big dominated attacks through for the crush effect. Look to strip Tectonic Plating away with Mangle, if possible, as it will make it much harder for your opponent to set up their Anothos for 6 outside of Blessing of Deliverance/Pummel/Stonewall Confidence turns.

This can be a tough match. Try to keep your life and equipment up. Lean into Pummel and Exude Confidence as ways to get around Flic Flak and push damage through. Your opponent will try to poke us down with Kodachis, which make blocking a hassle. Look to play Remembrance for red Blessings of Deliverance and try to go in big with Spinal and Crippling Crush to disrupt Katsu. We want to be swinging back with Anothos for 6 whenever possible.

Hold up defense reactions and be ready to use armor for Command and Conquer when protecting a valuable card in Arsenal.

Beware the low-life zone against Katsu. The last place we want to be against Katsu is at or below four life, where a single Kodachi + red Razer Reflex represents death. Being forced to block Kodachi with a card from hand puts us in a situation that is very hard to escape without the help of Blessing of Deliverance.

There are many different variants of Prism going around, and this match is a grind. Try to play quickly and efficiently, as this match can often take a lot of time to play and neither player wants it to end in a draw.

Use Time Skippers to destroy two auras in one turn. Otherwise, always destroy your opponent’s auras, and look to use Pummel and your big attacks to break Spectral Shields before they get out of hand. This is a very grindy matchup, so play with the intent of winning in the late game. Try to hold up armor as long as possible for the late game, or for when you are trying to swing the tempo. Beware of Prism’s own Pummels in the Phantasm attack builds, and assume they are red. Pummel cannot be used to power up Spectral Shields or aura attacks with Luminaris.

Soul Shield is our biggest obstacle to play around, since Prism doesn’t have a lot of armor or defense outside of her Spectral Shields. It’s often worth it to not dominate your attacks in favor of holding up a Pummel to make your opponent’s life more difficult.

Use Remembrance to get back your red Blessings of Deliverance and keep gaining life. Use Righteous Cleansing to erase an annoying aura if presented with the opportunity.

Play as fast as you can timewise, but not to the point where you get sloppy and make mistakes you wouldn’t otherwise.

This is a match where our 2-block cards shine, as they can effectively block Pistol. Look to pressure your opponent early and often, as Dash doesn’t do a great job on the defensive front. Pummel will continually annoy Dash and ensure the crush effect for Spinal Crush will shut down your opponent on their next turn.

Use Blessing of Deliverance for Anothos and pressure your opponent’s life while keeping yours high.

Overall, this has been a very easy matchup for me in the 15+ games I have played against Dash in CC with this list. Currently, I have only lost one time out of those games to Dash with this setup.

Azalea is annoying to play against, but ultimately doesn’t have the consistency/power to pose a truly viable threat against us. Increase the Tension does prevent us from playing defense reactions- which can be extremely annoying- but we have tools to counter pressure.

Mainly, Azalea cannot defend well. It’s much easier for our crush attacks to land, and a well-timed Mangle will destroy our opponent’s ability to opt with Skullbone Crosswrap. Gain life with Blessing of Deliverance and put loads of pressure on your opponent. Since we run a higher red count in this match, look to use Sink Below to draw into another blue when it’s needed.

Viserai can be built a few different ways. We want red Staunch Response and Sink Below to protect against Arknight Ascendancy and prevent the attack from hitting super hard, creating a bunch of Runechant tokens. Because our blue count is so high, we have a naturally better match against arcane damage classes.

Look to pressure Viserai and prevent him from amassing too many Runechant tokens. You’ll have a pretty good sense if the Viserai player is control or aggro in their first couple of turns. Against control, go all in and start swinging hard with your attacks right away to try to get some crush effects off. Lean into Pummel on your attack action cards to strip some additional cards from hand.

Against aggro, defend and look to bide your time. Be ready to pitch blues to block Runechants and look for opportunities to swing back with Anothos for 6. Keep your life and armor healthy, waiting for your moment to launch the counterattack.

Chane is a challenging match. You have two choices, and you usually need to decide within the first four turns of the game which you are going to take. As you practice this match more and more, you’ll learn the crucial signs of when it’s time to commit one way or the other, usually from either your draws or your opponent’s plays.

First option, get aggressive and pressure Chane relentlessly. Thanks to Carrion Husk and Grasp of the Arknight, Chane has a ton of defense and can invalidate one of our giant crush attacks. Often times, that can be all Chane needs to completely flip the tempo back in their favor. Hit hard and often until your opponent is forced to block with Carrion Husk, and try to get to a point where you are pushing massive damage at your opponent each and every turn so that their blood debt stacks and they take more and more damage from being unable to play their cards.

Option two is to turtle up completely and make your opponent deck themselves before they can kill you. With this strategy, you will almost always be looking to shuffle three copies of Blessing of Deliverance back into the deck with Remembrance and keep your life total and armor as healthy as possible. Try to play Blessing of Deliverance from arsenal for value and for a free swing of Anothos. It’s okay to block with all four cards from hand if you think you can hold out until your opponent burns through their entire deck.

Choose one path or the other. If you walk between the two and fail to commit, it’s almost always going to be a losing battle.

We run a high card count in this ~50/50 match, as the games can go long and we want to ensure we still have plenty of gas in the tank. Look to block out Dorinthea, store defense reactions in Arsenal, and prevent Dawnblade from getting a +1 counter for as long as possible. Don’t be afraid to let Dawnblade get a counter if you are confident you can retaliate with a dominated Crippling Crush that your opponent won’t be able to defend. They more than likely won’t be able to hit you with Dawnblade with only 1-2 cards in hand and will lose the counter.

Block a ton in the early game to thin the deck and increase your threat density, then look to flip the switch and put Dori on the backpedal.

Watch out for Rout, Ironsong Determination, and Steelblade Supremacy. Understand their deck, how it works, and what damage your opponent could present at any time. It’s fine to overblock if it means you keep Dori from snowballing too early in the game. Most of all, practice, practice, practice this matchup as you’re more likely than not to run into at least one Dori at the top tables in events.

Treat Boltyn as a go wide hero, and respect his ability to put out some staggering damage in the biggest turns of the game. Thankfully, we run a lot of non-attack block three cards that do a good job of getting around Boltyn’s hero ability and giving him a harder time of giving attacks go again, even if he has charged this turn.

Use Spinal Crush to hinder Boltyn for a turn and turn off his go again.

Play proactively, but keep your life up as much as possible. If Boltyn pressures too much, look to flip the tempo with cards like Crippling Crush later in the game. Boltyn’s weakness is his reliance on high card count to play efficiently. If we can counterpressure often and consistently enough, he will have a hard time regaining the tempo.

Kano is a lot less rampant in CC than Blitz, but that doesn’t mean we want to be ill equipped to deal with him. Play conservatively and use Pummel as a means to force damage through while holding back some cards for pitching to stop arcane. Because we don’t have the full Nullrune 4, use Tectonic Plating to enable Anothos to swing for 6 (representing 20% of Kano’s life if left unblocked). 

Be cautious of setting up giant attacks and not holding pitch back until the kill is in sight. Use Blessing of Deliverance whenever possible to gain life and be able to swing in with Anothos.