Time for another decklist deep dive! This time with the popular sought-after 4 horseman deck. Is the hype worth it in this case?

https://imgur.com/a3XjdNR

Card Breakdown:

• 16 Creatures

• 18 Actions

• 2 Artifacts

• 0 Upgrades

Power and Speed is the name of the game here. This deck can draw a lot of cards and play a lot of cards to get the ball rolling! Not much in the way of board clears, Save the Pack + Common Cold and Curiosity (I guess). It has some amount of Aember control in Sequis, Raiding Knight, Doorstep to Heaven, and Terms of Redress. There is some of Aember acceleration (Titan Mechanic, Oath of Poverty, Hunting Witch, Dust Pixie). There is some direct damage (Positron Bolt, Twin Bolt Emission, Mighty Tiger, Charge! And then there are tons of ways to cheat cards out of faction and even cheat Keys into play.

On the surface, this looks like a toolbox deck that is a bit light on control, but digging deeper in, this is a deck that races to completion and does it’s hardest to reuse or cheat cards into play as fast as possible.

Logos

In this deck, Logos gives you pure acceleration. With Library Access and three (yes, three) Phase Shifts plus Wild Wormhole and Library of Babble really let you hit the throttle on being able to draw cards and drop creatures and actions onto the board.

With this setup, you can just rip through the deck and setup a pretty oppressive board.

The creatures are okay at best. Dr. Escotera is pretty bad, but at least it’s another body on the board. Ganymede Archivist is great and can help setup archives to bank some key cards (and draw faster). Titan Mechanic accelerates your gameplay even more with an Aember discount (also great with Key Charge) that you can fairly easily turn-off by either suiciding it or playing another creature when you don’t want to give the opponent a discount.

You also do get some decent damage out of Positron Bolt and Twin Bolt Emission. Sloppy Labwork is also nice for setting up a great archive and ditching less than useful cards.

Logs as support does it again! This will never happen, but just for some quick maths with Library Access between Phase Shift and Wormhole, you basically get 8 cards drawn and can potentially end up playing 4 out of faction cards. If you already have a solid hand of Logos cards, you can quite quickly cycle through a quarter of your deck or more while establishing solid board presence.

Props if you can fire off Key Charge out of Logos (bonus props if you also have Titan Mechanic on the board)!

Sanctum

Here come the Horseman!

With 7 creatures you can make massive use of Charge! to deal quite a bit of damage! Doorstep can give some decent Aember control and buy more time for this rushy deck. Oath of Poverty is also fantastic to push for the win, Library of Babble will eventually be less useful once you’ve already dumped most Logos cards and Epic Quest can be hard to pull off. Terms of Redress gives you more control with your beefy creatures!

Remiel is solid off the bat and can trigger some fantastic cards like Ganymede Archivist, Mighty Tiger, or Witch of the Eye.

The Horseman of course to Horseman things. War is pretty fantastic in this deck as you can quickly get out-of-faction cards into play with Logos and you have some decent fighters (Snufflegator, Mighty Tiger, Titan Mechanic, even Escotera and Niffle Ape). Famine helps clear enemies off of the board and is decent at getting rid of low-power Elusive creatures….but beware, there are several weak creatures in this deck as well. Pestilence is another way to clear weak creatures (or just to setup a Save the Pack!), but is a risk to your own critters. And Death of course lets you quickly cycle creatures back, which is great considering how fast you can draw your deck.

Raiding Knight and Sequis give you a good bit of Aember control that helps push the rush game in your favor. Oath of Poverty also helps quite well in this regard as you can usually pull 3 Aember off of playing this card.

Last but not least, Epic Quest. This is typically pretty hard to pull off…..but between Ganymede Archivist, Phase Shift + Library Access, Sloppy Labwork, Horseman of Death, Remiel+Witch of the Eye, and even Epic Quest itself, you have half a decent chance of setting this up quite quickly. You do only have 3 knights to archive, but that is still a good portion of the way there and you can fish other Sanctum cards out of your garbage with Horseman of Death. Obviously this deck won’t pull it off very frequently, but the thread is there and you can still just use it to play around board clears and even trash it to Oath of Poverty for decent Aember gain.

Untamed

There is a little lack of focus here, but this faction really helps push the rush game. Curiosity is mostly terrible, but can get sometimes do work (while also potentially killing two of your own creatures).

Key Charge is just stupid good here. This deck has so much acceleration and ramp that you will probably be able to fire this off quite quickly. You even have the chance of firing this off in Logos with all of the Phase Shift non-sense that this deck can pull off. Bonus, you get a discount with Titan Mechanic!

Save the Pack is the only real board clear, but it can be setup in a number of ways (Common Cold, Positron Bolt, Twin Bolt Emission, Horseman of Pestilenc, Charge!). Plus, as before, you have a decent shot of firing this out of Logos!

Troop call is very anti-climactic with a single Niffle Ape, but at least it gives an Aember and can fish something out of the garbage (or save one creature from Save the Pack).

Vigor is okay, I guess. Helps keep some creature alive and can gain some Aember.

Snufflegator and Mighty Tiger are actually solid fighters and can help control the board.

Hunting Witch, Dust Pixie, and Witch of the Eye are flat-out amazing! Given the fact that you can also get them on the field out of Logos and even trigger Witch of the Eye with Remiel is just bonkers!

Conclusion

This deck is FAST, just FAST. The goal here is just to rocket past your opponent with just enough Aember and board control to slow your opponent down and keep them honest. The Horsemen here really are to be a speed-bump and be enabler while keeping a board presence. Using Horseman of Death to help setup an Epic Quest can be quite silly. Horseman of Pestilence can enable Save the Pack. Horse of Famine can clear out weak enemies Elusive enemies (beware friendly fire). War can setup some decent out-of-faction fighters as well to help manage the board.

All in all, this deck has a solid amount of Aember generation and speed-bumps to setup some quick forging of keys.

Keyforge is a game about racing to the finish while tripping your opponent. This deck does both of those very well.