Welcome to a special edition of my tournament meta summary posts. Today is the Team Elder Blood fundraiser charity for the people of Ukraine, trying to raise money to help provide medical aid to the victims of the war. There's a number of great players playing today, and many of the decks seem to have been built to be competitive but with some added spice. If you've been looking for something different to play, maybe one of these decks can give you some inspiration. All decks can be found here. Spyro and Pawloex are casting games on Twitch. You can donate to help the victims in Ukraine here.

Nilfgaard (11 total decks):

• Double Cross Assimilate(7)
  • w/Bribery (7)
  • w/Artorius Vigo (5)
  • w/Lydia (6)
  • w/Fercart (1)
  • w/Heatwave (2)
  • w/Muzzle (3)
  • w/Joachim (3)
• Imprisonment Assimilate (1)
• Imposter Assimilate (1)
• Enslave 6 (1)
• Enslave 5 Shupe (1)

Nilfgaard, unsurprisingly, remained one of the most popular leaders. Assimilate remained the most popular, with Double Cross as the most common variant with Maruth24 bringing the tournament tech'd Imprisonment and Specimen choosing for Imposter as part of an NR hard counter strategy. We also had a couple of Enslave decks, with PiotrCNS choosing Shupe Enslave and Pajabol bringing Enslave 6 with Damien/Skellen/Defender/Letho:Kingslayer.

Syndicate (10 total decks):

• Off the Books (6)
  • w/Bounty Package – Witchfinder, Graden, Executioners (1)
  • w/Heatwave (1)
  • Devo w/Junior (5)
  • w/Flying Redanian (5)
• Blood Money Bounty (1)
• Congregate (1)
• Devotion Jackpot (2)

Off the Books and Jackpot show up here, as expected. Most played the standard version of these decks, though Maruth24 did decide for Off the Books Bounty. Interesting more players brought the Flying Redanian this week than last week. We also had a Blood Money Bounty deck from Jamedi and a Congregate swarm deck from Piotr.

Northern Realms (8 total decks):

• Inspired Zeal Alumni (6)
  • w/Leticia (4)
  • w/Margarita (5)
  • w/Siege Masters (6)
  • w/Muzzle (2)
  • w/Necromancy (1)
  • w/Cintrian Spellweavers (4)
  • w/Angouleme (1)
• Inspired Zeal Siege (2)
  • w/Muzzle (1)
  • Devotion (1)

Alumni was a popular deck, once again. I found it interesting how many people brought Spellweavers – they seem like they'd give you an advantage in the mirror, and I wonder how that'll work out. If you're wondering about the Angouleme, that's Specimen as part of his hard target NR strategy. We also had two players choosing to go for Siege.

Skellige (5 total decks):

• Ursine Ritual Lippy Self Wound (2)
• Battle Trance Gedyneith (2)
• Reckless Flurry Lippy (1)

Onslaught vanished from this tournament – I guess it wasn't good enough to be one of the strong decks and not interesting enough to be one of the more "spicy" decks. Instead we have three Lippy decks, two with a self wound focus and one very meme-y one with Reckless Flurry, and two Gedy players.

Scoia'tael (4 total decks):

• Precision Strike Alzur (1)
• Mahakam Forge Alzur (1)
• Guerilla Tactics Alzur (1)
• Invigorate Handbuff (1)

Three out of four Scoia'tael decks were an Alzur deck in some form, two of which (PStrike and Forge) were also playing Francesca. We also had an Invigorate deck from Lerio.

Monsters (4 total decks):

• Carapace Keltullis (1)
• Overwhelming Hunger Triple Gerni (1)
• Fruits of Ysgith Relicts (2)
  • w/Offering (1)
  • w/Operator (1)

I get to write about Monsters! We had four players bringing them to this tournament, one being the classic Double Keltullis deck, one AQ Triple Gerni, and two Relicts decks. The Relicts decks from Pajabol and Lerio intrigued me, both of them having slight differences, my favorite of which were the Offering and Operator in Lerio's deck.