If you could pick a house based on its underlying themes and abilities, which combination could be a very strong deck based on house construction?

House themes being (this is not an exhaustive list but simple overview on theme and function - feel free to add in another tag for a house if you think it fits) :

Sanctum (creature defence)

Shadow (stealing aember )

Mars (Fight control)

Untamed (power abilities)

Dis (creature control)

Logos (drawing cards)

Brobnar (creature strength)

My guesses would be:

1) Mars + Logos + Sanctum ( I went looking for a deck with this house combination and I haven't found one yet!)

2) Untamed + logos + Sanctum

I would even go so far as to say can we pick the 3 - 4 best houses to play with, if it's possible?

Dis + Shadows + Logos

Dis + Shadows + Untamed

I honestly don't get the Dis hype, never met a deck that was good because of its Dis part. Even the sacred Gateway/Arise combo felt way too slow in most matches.

That being said of course there are strong Dis cards and decks. I believe every faction can have those, though, and every faction combination can yield a good deck. Just look at my Unteroffizier "Inferno" Fransen deck that has two typically thought weak houses, but such a ridiculously stacked choice of cards (9 activation/house-cheaters at least) that it is truly a monster. Great decks are edge cases that will happen with all factions.

2 hours ago, Amanal said:

Dis + Shadows + Logos

Dis + Shadows + Untamed

This, and in this order.

I don’t get the Logos hype. Apart from the Library Access/Phase Shift shenenigans I actually consider Logos the weakest house in general.

I realize that isn’t a popular opinion, but there it is 😁

42 minutes ago, Palpster said:

I don’t get the Logos hype. Apart from the Library Access/Phase Shift shenenigans I actually consider Logos the weakest house in general.

I realize that isn’t a popular opinion, but there it is 😁

Logos at it's best makes the rest of your deck work better.......but you have to have a good deck.

It's like the nos in your street racer. If you're putting that in a Pinto you'll make it go fast but it will likely crash and burn. If you put it in a Ferrari then it's going to do some ridiculous stuff, even though the Ferrari is fast on its own.

Also, curse the Fast n Furious marathon that has me making street racing comparisons.

Untamed (Lost in Woods/nature's Call/Key Charge)
Shadows (Aember Control)
Then either a toss-up between Logos for reap effects or Brobnar for Beefcakes when you need to get your hands dirty.

I am a big fan of Dis/Shadow combos. I have a few of them, and what I believe to be my 3 strongest decks are all that combo. 2 are Dis Shadow Brobnar, 1 is Dis Shadow Logos.

Martín the Allegedly Shadowy
https://www.keyforgegame.com/deck-details/7fac3cba-5a19-468e-b94a-0deceed141d5
Christiansen the Thirsty
https://www.keyforgegame.com/deck-details/33dcda60-04ea-4ba8-b1f0-49a5c02b56f7
Empress "Gray" Valiance
https://www.keyforgegame.com/deck-details/8cf110b8-475e-4a51-9ca7-d76b3badac42

I don't have much play time with Empress "Gray" Valiance. I got her in a sealed deck tourney. I won 3 - 0 3 rounds of swiss. (small tourney obviously) the last player of the night was the only one who managed to forge even a single key against me. He was also the only person where I didn't have a strong Dis game. I can't say for sure if @Amanal and @Krashwire are correct about that being one of the best house combos because with so little time with the deck I can't be certain. Dis is the clear strength of that deck too, not Logos. But I will say that from what I have played, it may take the top spot in my deck list for sure!

1 hour ago, KandyKidZero said:

Untamed (Lost in Woods/nature's Call/Key Charge)
Shadows (Aember Control)
Then either a toss-up between Logos for reap effects or Brobnar for Beefcakes when you need to get your hands dirty.

I've seen Untamed have some interesting clinch cards. I can see the argument for this being a strong house.

Shadow always seems like a house that needs your opponent to get ahead for its tricks to work. If your opponent doesn't make aember but focuses on creatures in their line then your starting shadow hand becomes very weak to use. I think a player could exploit this weakness and just go for mass creature buildup against a shadow deck.

I don't know if Borbnar is the beefcake house. I've seen better and stronger Mars creatures and would definitely consider Mars to be a beefcake house.

How would an Untamed + Mars + Logos be for you?

58 minutes ago, xbeaker said:

I am a big fan of Dis/Shadow combos. I have a few of them, and what I believe to be my 3 strongest decks are all that combo. 2 are Dis Shadow Brobnar, 1 is Dis Shadow Logos.

Martín the Allegedly Shadowy
https://www.keyforgegame.com/deck-details/7fac3cba-5a19-468e-b94a-0deceed141d5
Christiansen the Thirsty
https://www.keyforgegame.com/deck-details/33dcda60-04ea-4ba8-b1f0-49a5c02b56f7
Empress "Gray" Valiance
https://www.keyforgegame.com/deck-details/8cf110b8-475e-4a51-9ca7-d76b3badac42

I don't have much play time with Empress "Gray" Valiance. I got her in a sealed deck tourney. I won 3 - 0 3 rounds of swiss. (small tourney obviously) the last player of the night was the only one who managed to forge even a single key against me. He was also the only person where I didn't have a strong Dis game. I can't say for sure if @Amanal and @Krashwire are correct about that being one of the best house combos because with so little time with the deck I can't be certain. Dis is the clear strength of that deck too, not Logos. But I will say that from what I have played, it may take the top spot in my deck list for sure!

My own deck resembles your first Shadow + Dis deck above so I don't see it as particularly strong. The second is marginally better. That third deck looks really strong.

I think it’s too shallow of an analysis to pick three houses and say “the strongest deck will come from this”.

Its pretty clear that “the strongest” deck will be a gimmick deck that doesn’t have a natural counter in the wild.

If we go beyond gimmick (2x horsemen, quad bear flute, double time travel, phase/seed, pure amber rush), and decide we’re looking for a house combination that will regularly churn out a “strong” deck from the generation algorithm, it gets more complicated.

First of all, I’d argue that duplicates are the key to deck success. This gives you higher probability to start with that card, higher likelihood to have it at the right time and capability of frequent repetition. This, however isn’t necessarily tied to house combos per se.

I think it’s crucial to have some board wipes in the deck, and we see those in Dis, and Brobnar for example. If focusing on a wall of critters like with Sanctum, these become crucial. And an approach of battlefield domination is near futile for this reason unless you know your opponent is weak on board wipes.

High amber play cards are also important (without going into gimmicky amber rush territory), but are generally not tied to a house.

Mars is a complex combo house so for that very reason I’d keep away from that. I’ve had my funnest wins with mars and It would be really fun to construct a deck with mars, but in a generated deck, it falls short, imo.

Sanctum is a lot of fun and can put up a veritable Maginot line defense, but aptly named, it’s easy to just circumvent with board clear and assassination cards. Beyond this, they have some fun combos and lots of amber capture, but nothing outstanding to me

untamed definitely has some cool potential with creatures and useful actions, but every time I think of untamed it’s gimmick time: flute, chota amber rush, etc

Shadows has some excellent skirmish/elusive usage, and fun toys and near board wipes and powerful upgrades. I’d probably pick shadows to be part of this.

Logos has top tier milking abilities and would also likely be my choice.

So for me: Dis, Logos, shadows.

2 hours ago, Sergovan said:

I've seen Untamed have some interesting clinch cards. I can see the argument for this being a strong house.

Shadow always seems like a house that needs your opponent to get ahead for its tricks to work. If your opponent doesn't make aember but focuses on creatures in their line then your starting shadow hand becomes very weak to use. I think a player could exploit this weakness and just go for mass creature buildup against a shadow deck.

I don't know if Borbnar is the beefcake house. I've seen better and stronger Mars creatures and would definitely consider Mars to be a beefcake house.

How would an Untamed + Mars + Logos be for you?

As much as I like the flavor of Mars being able to "abduct" your opponent's creatures, the creatures themselves are fairly fragile (barring the three creatures that have 6+ power). Brobnar is all beef, all the time except for wardrummer and grenade snib.

If your opponent is going the "creature route" as you say, then they will most likely be reaping, which creates the aember you need to steal. I don't see the problem here.

Mars has some decent combos that are great for aember rushing (Crystal Hive + "John Smyth", enjoy your key). Their liability lies in that most of the good cards have 2 or 3 strength, and while they are elusive, buckle to many common board wipes from Shadows and Logos or Firespitter + Anger/Gauntlet of Command.

Shadows, Dis, Sanctum. Shadows for the Aember thievery, Dis for its penchant for removal, and Sanctum for persistent board presence. I know it sounds counterproductive to have Dis and Sanctum together for opposite reasons, but it works.

10 minutes ago, twinstarbmc said:

Shadows, Dis, Sanctum. Shadows for the Aember thievery, Dis for its penchant for removal, and Sanctum for persistent board presence. I know it sounds counterproductive to have Dis and Sanctum together for opposite reasons, but it works.

There’s some back and forth with this. Dis actually has Knight creatures that synergies with Epic Quest, but Sanctum has that anti-dis card forget its name.

I think the very strongest decks can be from any houses — every house has cards and combos that can be very powerful, but those very best setups within each house are also very rare.

In terms of typical strength, I’d say the top tier is Dis and Shadows. Dis has strong creature removal, lots of good creatures with useful effects, and very few bad or useless cards. Shadows has lots of good actions for aember manipulation, okay creature removal, and creatures with reliably useful effects. Again very few weak cards, which is the main reason I put these two in the top tier.

Second tier for me is Logos, Untamed, and Sanctum (and probably in that order). Logos seems to be rarely very good but also rarely bad. Lots of actions that do minor, useful things and generate a bit of aember, and the creatures and artifacts are often mediocre. Reliable but usually unimpressive. Untamed has incredible potential but also a lot of pretty weak cards, so most of the time when I see Untamed in a deck it’s not that great overall. Sanctum has lots of strong creatures but also quite a few weak actions and artifacts.

That leaves Brobnar and Mars at the bottom. As I said at the start any house can be incredibly strong, but these two seem to have the worst average results in the decks I’ve seen. For Brobnar, I often see lots of cards that depend on fighting and then not enough creatures to actually do the fighting. I also find fight-based mechanics to be somewhat slow and easy to disrupt, and a lot of the Brobnar cards are unimpressive. Mars has lots of fun tricks and combos, but they rarely seem to come together well when randomly generated. The creatures are mostly weak, and there are a lot of actions and artifacts that are very situational or actively harmful.

For me it would be Dis, Shadows, Untamed.

Shadows steals, the easiest and most effective way to stop an opponent from forging a key, and Dis disrupts the game. The third house is choice of preference, I like the fun things Mars does, some people will prefer big creatures in Brobnar, or card draw and hand size of logos, Untamed does a great job at aember generation.

No one likes Sanctum though.

@xbeaker If we played bring three decks, and your opponent gets rid of one.

I would say that Empress "Gray" Valiance is the better deck you have, so that is the one I would get rid of. Christiansen the Thirsty Comes in second and would be the deck I expected to play. Martín the Allegedly Shadowy has a poor creature count in Brobnar and only 8 cards that give you Amber for playing them, it just doesn't look good. So I would expect to play against Christiansen the Thirsty.

I am still working through my decks and finding which ones I like and which ones play well. Regisacred of the Ganster's Fortress was my first deck and is one I am fond of. The deck itself is great. Horsemen can be fun, but they are generally just OK creatures. Wimhorror is probably better though. As for Surgeon Chafer I just like it as it has two Mavericks and they aren't terrible!

Wimhorror, the "Sorceress" of Fire
https://www.keyforgegame.com/deck-details/7f89bc99-b9d6-4e45-8dac-e13b596dd491

Regisacred of the Ganster's Fortress
https://www.keyforgegame.com/deck-details/68498381-6370-4692-b1bc-76e4c0ae2ef5

Surgeon Chafer
https://www.keyforgegame.com/deck-details/92ac40da-f89d-42f5-8aef-f6395654714f

Shadows is so good thanks to all the steal. Steal is what, way bryter than capture. Dis have so many control cards and discard/destroy wich is much better than dmg/stun.

Shadows dis is the name of the game. There are other strong houses though.

I think a top tier deck either needs to be able to do shenanigans, and/or stop it. To me, this means that the top tier decks will probably contain Logos, as it is the only house with a counter to archive, and it enables you to search for your shenanigans. The next 2 houses seem a bit more dealers choice.

Between board wipes, discard effects, Restringuntus, and Poltergeist, Dis can counter any other shenanigans.

Untamed is amazing at winning quickly.

After you counter other strategies, shadows might be the best at keeping your opponent down.

Mars gains a lot of power from logo's ability to archive.

Sanctum is capable of doing all of these benefits, but it tends to be worse than the house I gave it to. That doesn't stop "having a little bit of everything" from being good.

I have nothing for Brobnar.

In the end, I lean toward Logos, Dis, and Untamed.

You can find just about every type of card in every house; and although houses lean towards a particular theme, they also tend to rocks-paper-scissors each other:

Ie Untamed has lots of amber generation, but Shadows has lots of steal (Sanctum has lots of capture, Brobnar has a fair amount of lose); Logos has card draw and archive mechanics, Dis has card limitation mechanics; Brobnar has lots of damage, Sanctum has lots of healing; Mars has lots of purge, which doesn’t have a counter per se.

I view it more as: pick a deck archetype/win condition, then figure out what would really throw a monkey wrench into its plans.

10 hours ago, Revert said:

Untamed is amazing at winning quickly.

In the end, I lean toward Logos, Dis, and Untamed.

What do you attribute this to with Untamed, and I don’t mean a constructed deck, but from a procedurally generated deck. Sure, they can get powerful amber combos and key rush with cards like chota and keycharge, comboed with witch and full moon, but unless you spend that aember it’s incredibly vulnerable to steal or lose. I feel most of the untamed decks I’ve seen don’t reflect this aember and key rush,, while Dis and Shadows decks, for example, often represent their playstyle. So untamed feels like a better Mars to me - strong combos in theory but rarely pan out due to all the links in the chain or simply the algorithm

3 hours ago, Poposhka said:

What do you attribute this to with Untamed, and I don’t mean a constructed deck, but from a procedurally generated deck. Sure, they can get powerful amber combos and key rush with cards like chota and keycharge, comboed with witch and full moon, but unless you spend that aember it’s incredibly vulnerable to steal or lose. I feel most of the untamed decks I’ve seen don’t reflect this aember and key rush,, while Dis and Shadows decks, for example, often represent their playstyle. So untamed feels like a better Mars to me - strong combos in theory but rarely pan out due to all the links in the chain or simply the algorithm

"Unless you spend that aember" you mean with a key charge or chota? Pushing over the hump and cheating a key is the best steal counter in the game at the moment. Key charge is common, and chota is a creature giving you aember off of full moon/hunting witch to push over the 7 you need to cheat.

Beyond key cheating and recursion (witch of the eye/nepenthe/regrowth), they have some good creatures and control as well. It's not just niffle apes lol. (Yeah those are underwhelming).

3 hours ago, Poposhka said:

What do you attribute this to with Untamed, and I don’t mean a constructed deck, but from a procedurally generated deck.

The question is what combos produce a top tier deck, not which combos produce the best decks on average. The result of this question is going to look almost constructed. I know you reinterpreted the question because of gimmick decks (shenanigans), but I chose not to.

Hi

I doubt there is truly a WIN WIN deck out there because each deck depends on the players preferences and style of play. My first deck I ever got is Mars/Brobnar/Dis, Professor J Chronocode, it has a very subtle sacrifice your creatures for advantage with Soul Snatcher and Dust Imps, also the deck is very flexible. I think any deck that is flexible will win more often but must be taken into consideration with the players ability, LOL every time I play one of my Keyforge decks I learn something new. Personally I would love Brobnar/Untamed/Dis as my favorite housed deck because Muscle, Ramp, and Tricks. I have recently got one deck with that amalgamation, Flame-breathing Haukea of the Fires. The deck may lack the creatures and combos I was dreaming of but it does have Key charge AND Chota Hazri so it possibly can make 2 keys whenever in a game, which I find interesting because you can only ever have 1 Key charge per deck but Chota for all intents and purposes is a living Key Charge LOL😁