How to play : Diana Scorn of the Moon

A showdown opens whenever units move into a battlefield their side does not control, on your turn or on theirs, and while it runs only Actions and Reactions can be played. That is where this deck does its work. Exhaust Diana and a Gust or a Stupefy costs you no rune at all, while two more runes pay Eclipse’s full three energy. Moonfall is the card the plan turns on: it moves up to one enemy unit to a battlefield where you have units, then gives every enemy unit there -2 might this turn, so one card chooses the fight and tilts it.

Your units do the scoring: Hwei, Brooding Painter, Zed, Without a Sound and Thousand-Tailed Watcher are the bodies that conquer; Sprite Fountain and the face-down units hold the early board; and the spells tilt every fight before it is settled. Diana readies with the rest of your cards at the start of each of your turns, so every round you choose: spend her energy on your own attack, or keep her ready for theirs.

You draw four and may replace up to two. Keep the cheap pieces: Sprite Fountain, Stupefy, Gust, Tideturner, Evelynn, Entrancing and Patched Porobot. The opener we want is Sprite Fountain with a cheap Reaction. The Fountain gives you a ready 3-might Sprite the turn you play it, and when the Fountain dies at the start of your next turn, its Deathknell gives you a second one: one card, two turns of a unit that can walk straight to a battlefield.

Mind the top of the curve: Thousand-Tailed Watcher costs seven energy, Hwei and Zed five each. One of them beside cheap cards is a keep; two in a four-card hand is a mulligan. Never mulligan to find your champion: Diana, Lunari waits in the Champion Zone from the first turn. And a hand of spells with no unit is weaker than it looks, because Moonfall needs a battlefield where you already have units.

Diana, Lunari costs three energy from the Champion Zone: put her on the battlefield you mean to fight over. Each time a showdown begins there, you may pay one energy to Predict, then reveal your top card and draw it if it is a spell; Predict lets you send a unit or a gear to the bottom first, and your Legend’s energy can pay for it, since that trigger resolves inside the showdown. In a best of three you pick your battlefield: Targon’s Peak readies two runes at the end of the turn you conquer it, so you go into their turn with two runes ready for Reactions; Rockfall Path lets nobody play a unit there, which shuts off Ambush, theirs and our Kha’Zix alike; and Seat of Power draws you a card if you conquer it while you control the other battlefield.

Then hide. A card can only be hidden at a battlefield you control, for one power of any domain, and each battlefield holds one face-down card; from the next turn on, the opponent’s included, Tideturner or Evelynn, Entrancing plays from there as a Reaction for 0 energy. Played from face down on your turn, Evelynn may pull an enemy unit from another location to her battlefield: pick a small unit guarding a battlefield alone, and it has to fight your units at hers while the battlefield it left sits empty for your next move. Lose a battlefield and its face-down card goes with it.

Hwei, Brooding Painter pays you for every move. Each time he moves you draw one, then discard one, and the discarded card picks the bonus: a spell draws you one more, a gear readies up to two runes, a unit gives Hwei +3 might this turn. Ride the Wind moves him and readies him; a Tideturner played from face down trades places with him and puts him on its battlefield; and Flash counts too, since going home is a move. Discard a unit as he walks into a fight, which makes him 8 might, and a spell as he walks out.

Zed, Without a Sound turns a conquest into a second threat. Each time he conquers, a 0-might Shadow Clone token joins your base, and when that Clone attacks you may banish a unit from your trash to give it Assault 4. Zed’s own Action swaps him with a Clone for one energy and one Chaos power; because it is an Action it works inside a showdown, where Diana’s energy can pay the energy part. Walk a Clone onto a battlefield you hold, and when they attack it, trade it for the 5-might Zed.

Know what each answer reaches. Gust only returns a unit with 3 might or less at a battlefield. Stupefy takes 1 might, never below 1, but draws you a card. Eclipse takes 4 with no floor, then Predicts. Star-Crossed returns any enemy unit, but one of yours goes back to hand with it: pick Fizz, Trickster, whose replay casts a spell from your trash for its power cost alone, or a Tideturner or an Evelynn you can hide again. Hard Bargain counters a spell unless its controller pays two energy, and paying its Repeat makes them face that tax a second time.

Numbers worth memorizing: in a showdown, Diana’s energy plus one rune pays for Hard Bargain or Flash, and plus two runes for Eclipse, Moonfall or Star-Crossed, recycling one of those two for the power when the card asks for it. Kha’Zix, Mutating Horror has Ambush, so it can arrive as a Reaction at a battlefield where you have units, with Diana paying one of its four energy, and it gets +2 might whenever it attacks or defends against a lone enemy unit. Thousand-Tailed Watcher is the all-in turn: with Accelerate, eight energy and two Mind power in all, it enters ready, every enemy unit is 3 might smaller this turn, never below 1, and it can move straight in.