The deck was buitl by Tanner. We faced each other at the michigan regionals where we drew because he beat me game one and I was able to beat him game two with destinty and dormant for millions of years. At that time I was looking for a way to kill people wiht only 1 attack as I felt it was still the best way to kill people. For montreal I only ran 4 Spiral Arrows as my attack which made the deck check very consistantly. The character is purely for the handsize. The character ability is nice, and I use it when games become too tight for my sake like if im at sub 10 life and I don't feel safe.I took the deck and tuned it according to what I saw fit for the Quebec regionals where I was able to win king of swiss and 1st place.
The general basis of the deck is hitting your opponent with Juni's spiral arrow while your opponent is completely committed. Getting hit with the spiral arrow ussually is game for the opponent. The deck has a couple of problems with certain cards like torn hero, destiny, dormant for millions of years, so I added the best attack in the meta Ira Spinta and the deck had to be changed like more tenacious and some lord of the makai to loop spintas and for the sideboard plan of feline spike loops. In rochester, I wanted to play something new for thier meta, so I went with a more conservative version of order/water donovan similar to Jon Herr's deck. I liked both decks but wasn't sure what to play. So I made my sideboard the most expensive sideboard in the game with 3 feline spikes, 2 defenders, and 3 rejections, to combat a heavy aggresive deck. I found that people never expect a control deck to transform into a completely different archetype such as a hybrid or agro deck. For this reason some sidebaord cards like dormant for millions of years have been shoved into the mainboard.

Starting Character GIll:

[1]**Donovan**

Foundations
[4] Makai High Noble
[2] Cutting Edge
[3] Amy's Assistance
[2] Holding Ground
[3] Lord of the Makai
[4] Tenacious
[4] Blood Runs True
[3] Chinese Boxing
[2] Dormant for Millions of Years
[4] Forethought
[4] Expereinced Combatant
[4] Program Malfunction
[4] Aquakinesis

Splits
[4] Psycho-style
[1]Charismatic

Assets
[4] Seal of Cessation
[2] Assasination Arts
[4] Olcadan's Mentoring

Actions
[4] Tag Along

Attacks
[3]Ira Spinta
[3] Juni's Spiral arrow

Sdieboard-
[3] Feline Spike
[2] Defender
[3] Rejection

Thanks for deck list. As a newbie i find these really helpfull. Also how does the character that doesnt match the starting character work? I see its a gill Deck but Donovan is in there? Please explain a little bit. When you cast out a character from hand it goes to staging and you can use its abilities? I notice a lot of starter decks have 2 of main guy 1 is to cast out? Also the rulings on playing a card is a little awkward only 1 ability per copy so say for example if i had 2 akumas out i can control check hack 2 times in one turn?

^ If you have a character in the deck that doesn't share the same name as the starting character, that character can only be used to block (+0M ain't bad), or to switch into for game 2 or 3. It's also a 6 check, which also isn't a bad thing. You can legally play the non-matching character into your card pool, but at the end of the turn he'll be discarded just like an attack that didn't deal damage.

If you stack an Akuma-6 on top of Akuma-6, then you really get no benefit -- when you stack another character, you only gain abilities printed on the new character that you did not already have. The only reason to do that is if you have some card that benefits from having more character cards in play (like Yi-Shan*; a duplicate character still counts for that) or requires you to pay a cost by discarding a character (see: Cody***)

OP: Cool deck, I would've loved to see if I could beat this with my Froggy . It probably would've taken 2 hours because I couldn't kill anyone without a perfect board or them overextending tho... :x

Thanks for the list. I see our decks are very different outside of the kill. Is BRT the only way for you to push spiral arrow through?

It's painful, but I also use forethought aswell if things get tight.

Wafflecopter said:

Thanks for explanation this is only in regards to characters correct? You can play an effect from a foundation and play it again from another copy of same foundation freely correct?

Yes, The reason I ran donovan in my mainbaord was this:

I didn't have enough room in my sideboard to play the 8 cards essentially. And I figured donovan was the correct choice because it is a 6 check +0 mid block. Feline spike and defender could be mainboard but those are 1 check's and 3 checks that i didn't really need and i didn't match any symbols with rejection.

Will you post the written steps to your turn, too?

I'll handle that part.

Step 1: Play insane lockdown board.
Step 2: Play Spiral Arrow.
Step 3: Watch as opponent squirms while his foundations fall over on their sides permanently.
Step 4: Win.

Yes, I am aware that's not how easy it is. I'm just being funny =p

HolyDragonCloud said:

I know you are. It's just a reference to what he told us on the Sunday while talking about his match against Tuesday.

Plus, we were talking about shooping a Tanner/Shajir flowchart on the way back so it'd actually be useful.

Homme Chapeau said:

Actually, once you're ready to go for the lock isn't it really just that easy?

Maybe I've spent too many years playing Order just to go "Oh... lock down... yeah... that's fun!"

Really interesting Sir. I'm very curious about the Tuesday's Akuma deck who success to grip your order mechanics. Very strong lock deck and with the reprint and add of Cursed Blood, it'll be more silly ! (why they reprint this card O_o)

This deck generally has a really good match up against other evil/order/control decks i find because it doesn't matter if they negate your committing as long as their cards are sideways when you play the spiral arrow and you are able to hit with your enhance. So a board of chesters, red lotus, and oral dead doesn't really bother me. With 15 peices of committing +Olcadan's the numbers are still in my favour to overwhelm someone.

sir_shajir said:

For having faced the 'shwa regionals version of the deck in an exhibition match I can say that yes it is very easy to overwhelm someone. Although I do like Lantern's modification on it (even though he loses 1 handsize).

For the funny, a casual game against Morrigan3 is hilarious.

Our Arrow Lock deck is a bit different, tho we follow mainly off Tanner. We have that extra method of pushing through Spiral Arrow, because BRT isn't enough (and can ruin the lock if they draw/check lucky) and Forethoughts should be saved.

In our experience, one thing this deck has problems with is Revenant's Calling. Dormant ind33d serves as a roadblock, but it seems like it always comes short in the control game against Evil.

How else do you push it through? I couldn't think of anything off the top of my head?

Well enslaved is a speed pump for order. It's no unrequited but it's still better than nothing.

Why is spiral arrow legal if has such high lockdown ability and it has no limit on the cards it restricts?

It's legal because it was released in a set which has not yet rotated, and it's not been banned :]

With one or two exceptions (J Talbain), I don't believe any cards have been banned that didn't dominate a tournament (or several) before the hammer came down. Spiral Arrow isn't dramatically more powerful than a host of other cards that can simply kill in a single hit (check out Tiger Fury, or any of several Powerful:3 attacks), and the additional setup required to make a SA lock means that a simpler aggro deck can win much more directly.

Honestly the card is strong, however it's really the deck that makes it overpowered. With cards like brt and forethought once you hit someone they really dont have a chance of bringing thier board back. Also the cards can still be readied just not at the start of the turn, but again the ridiculous order cards can usually take care of that. As for not getting banned, I mean come on they havn't even banned owlface.

tannerface said:

True true, I don't know if they'll bother banning anything until after worlds like how they waited till the right after worlds to ban injury assets and higher calibur

Unfortunately FFG has the tendency to ban things after they have done thier worth of damage. Look at higher calibre and addes syndicate.

tannerface said:

This is semi-true. In the King's Games Regional top 8 against Noel's Morrigan, he planted 2 Destiny on the board before turn 3. I never hacked him in that entire game. Instead I had to lock down the entire board 'manually' if you will, with cards like Psycho Style and Program Malfunction. I had one Tenacious and one Amy's ready out of 20+ foundations when I got the lock. From there on out I just Programed his foundations or Psycho Style'd them during the Spiral Arrow.

The Gill can't always hack you

Well if you seen an owl face then the destiny's wouldn't have mattered.

Forethought is the main thing that makes the lock absolute not BRT smart players know how to play around it . The only time BRT becomes an issue is when it comes to blocking .