With the release of Dynasty I’m most excited to get my hands on the new Assassin hero, Arakni. This class seems like it’ll be a lot of fun. I love interactive decks, and this one seems very interactive! Plus I really dig the flavor and artwork.

That said, it’s not clear to me whether or not Arakni is going to be any good with the current card support. After a couple of days of testing on Talishar, they don’t feel super strong to me, but I’m not the best innovator when it comes to new decks, so I’m likely far away from the optimal build. I’m going to put some effort into exploring the class to see if I can find my way to something that works. Good or bad, Arakni is a lot of fun to play, and I’m enjoying the process anyway.

Here is the list I’m working with so far:

Class: Assassin
Hero: Arakni, Huntsman
Weapons: Spider's Bite,Spider's Bite
Equipment: Arcane Lantern, Blacktek Whisperers, Crown of Providence, Fyendal's Spring Tunic, Ironrot Gauntlet, Mask of Perdition, Nullrune Gloves, Nullrune Robe, Snapdragon Scalers

(3) Annihilate the Armed (red)
(3) Cut to the Chase (red)
(2) Even Bigger Than That! (red)
(3) Fate Foreseen (red)
(3) Fleece the Frail (red)
(3) Leave no Witnesses (red)
(3) Nimblism (red)
(3) Plunder the Poor (red)
(3) Razor Reflex (red)
(3) Sack the Shifty (red)
(3) Scar for a Scar (red)
(3) Sink Below (red)
(3) Slay the Scholars (red)
(3) Unmovable (red)
(3) Captain's Call (yellow)
(3) Eradicate (yellow)
(3) Shred (yellow)
(3) Slay the Scholars (yellow)
(3) Fleece the Frail (blue)
(3) Pay Day (blue)
(3) Plunder the Poor (blue)
(1) Shred (blue)
(3) Slay the Scholars (blue)
(3) Surgical Extraction (blue)

See the deck on fabrary.net

Typically I’m going to be swinging with a Spider’s Bite (or two if Tunic is up), pumping contract attacks, and blocking as efficiently as I can. The gameplan is pretty grind-y. Arakni doesn’t have a lot of offensive output. They do have pretty efficient attacks, some with big upside, but I don’t see them putting together huge offensive turns. Arakni does defend pretty well though, with all of their 3 blocks and re-equipable armor. The main win condition I’m shooting for is fatiguing my opponent, or for a mid-range type game to leak damage, whittle down their life total and win with an attack reaction.

Gameplan in detail

I’m looking for maximum efficiency with my hands, and that usually involves a mix of defense and offense. Swinging with Spider’s Bite is good when you can follow up with a 1 for 5 like Annihalate the Armed. That presents 6 damage from 2 cards… average, but consider that you only burn a single card from your deck with this attack (attacking with one, pitching one) and for your opponent to full block it’s going to likely require at least 3 cards. For a deck looking to fatigue, that’s a good trade. And if they don’t block, you still mill at least one card from their deck, maybe two if you use the Mask.

Spider’s bite into a 0 for 4 is not a good play, so I try to avoid it. You are using 2 cards for 5 damage, which is below rate. The 0 for 4 can most likely be blocked with 2 cards whether the dagger hits or not, so the dagger hit doesn’t really matter much, besides the 1 damage I guess, but paying 2 for 1 isn’t very good. Swinging two daggers, with a blue pitch and a tunic, into a 0 for 4 is quite strong though. Again you’re presenting 6 damage on 2 cards, and forcing some very inefficient blocking from your opponent to deal with it.

Other 2 card hands buffing a 0 for 4 attack using Nimblism or Cut to the Chase are pretty good. A 0 for 4 that you can trigger the Blackteks on to follow up with another 0 for 4 is great. Typically you can block for 6 with your other two cards, or 7 if one of them is a d-react, resulting in a 13-14 damage turn cycle. You’re not likely to find many turn cycles that are better than maybe 13-14 damage. You want to keep as many turn cycles in the 12-14 range as you can, keep life totals close, and if you can do that well you should be gaining significant card advantage with all of your banishing and efficient trades on attack throughout the game.

Messing with your opponent’s deck feels quite powerful from your hero ability to sink cards you don’t want them to have and messing with their pitch stack. I think high level Arakni play is going to require keeping close track of both decks pitch stack to know what’s coming for both of you on 2nd cycle. The fact that games will tend to go long means that when you sink a power card early using Arakni’s ability, you are likely to just face it later. But you know its there while your opponent does not. Information asymmetry granted to Arakni from the hero ability can almost definitely be used to great effect, but I’m not playing on that level yet.

I’ve been blocking aggressively with my Assassin equipment in most matchups so I can get the block value before destroying them, then re-equipping to do it all over again. This ability makes assassin more resiliant to awkward breakpoints, and is good into something like Ninja that likes to ping for 1 damage.

I find that to get contract attacks to hit you often have to buff or react them. Nimbalism into one of the 0 cost attacks is a very nice 7 power attack that your opponent will have to work hard to block. If they do, you have a lot of attack reactions to still push damage between Razor Reflex, Cut to the Chase, and Shred.

Razor Reflex also helps to go wide with a pair of contract attacks. Turns where you can attack with multiple contracts, through Razor Reflex, Blacktek, or Captain’s Call can apply quite a bit of pressure and perhaps net you a lot of silver since contracts stay active for the whole chain. You can in principle get 3 silver on two attacks, say a Plunder the Poor hits and banishes a 0 cost, then Sack the Shifty hits and banishes a 1 cost with go again. The first hit would fulfill the Plunder the Poor contract, and the second fulfills both contracts. Stacking contracts seems very powerful and like it’s something to aim for.

That said, you aren’t going to be putting together huge damage turns, so you shouldn’t force a go wide strategy. I’ve been really trying to pick my spots, maybe leaving a razor reflex in hand for a while until the moment is right to really press the attack. Otherwise, it’s often better to stick to the more patient gameplan of blocking and swinging back for a single pumped attack, maybe after a dagger swing or two.

Even Bigger Than That combined with the daggers can be awesome when it hits. The idea is to use EBTT after a dagger hits. It will let you pick up a contract attack, which you’re likely to find with the opt 3 that the red EBTT gives. You’ll have a couple of contract attacks in hand at this point, so you can swing with one, it will get go again from the Quicken token, then swing with the second. Having ways to give go again apart from Blackteks is important because the hit requirement of Blackteks puts too much agency in your opponents hands, often leaving you unable to swing twice when you want to. In fact, it might even be worth running Snapdragon Scalers instead of Blackteks into matchups that block well, like Guardian.

A 3 card hand, pitching a blue to swing the dagger, playing EBTT, then swinging with 1 for 5 and 0 for 4 contract attacks is a pretty decent turn, threatening 10 damage and double contracts on 3 cards. That said, I am finding that with as many reactions as I’m running, EBTT does whiff sometimes. I might end up taking it out, but for now I’m finding it valuable.

I don’t think I’ve used Pay Day as anything other than a pitch or block card once yet. It’s worth running as a blue block 3 anyway, and I suppose the ability might work out here and there. If you have to use Blacktek to give an attack go again just to play Pay Day, it’s really only netting you 2 silver, since you’ll have to pay 2 to buy back Blackteks. I’m not sure that’s worth it. And I’m not sure its better than attacking a second time if you’re able to.

Scar for a Scar is just a good attack that can help push a bit of extra damage. It’s not an all star, and I find it a bit awkward when I’m not behind in life. I’d rather have Snatch in a lot of cases, and am think about swapping it into this slot.

Captain’s Call provides good utility, especially given that we can run the yellow (or even blue) so it’s at the very least good for pitch. I most often use it in the go again mode, but the +2 power is helpful, too. I’ve seen some lists run Lead The Charge in this slot, but it’s so much less flexible given that it only gains an action point and you have to run the red, so I prefer Captain’s Call.

The majestic contract attacks, Leave No Witnesses, Eradicate, and Surgical Extraction, are all fantastic. I like to line up buffs and attack reactions especially with these attacks, given that they all have strong on-hit effects. Leave No Witnesses is a mini C&C, forcing a block from a lot of decks, and the banish red contract is very often relevant. Surgical Extraction’s hand threat is super powerful, and gives you more agency to make sure the contract pays out since you can choose the card from hand to banish. I find the contract on Eradicate doesn’t hit often since most decks don’t tend to run many yellows, but the on hit is crazy, especially if you’ve buffed. Milling 4, 7, or even more cards is wild. I’ve found opponents to respect the on hits from all of these, so very often they draw out blocks and even over blocks. That’s fine with me most of the time. But if you can react to get these to hit, they really help to grab or maintain tempo.

Other strategies considered and cards left out

I had initially started out with a more aggressive strategy, trying to maximize opportunities to attack with 2 contracts, including more ways to give go again. I had Art of War, Flock, Captain’s Call, and Razor Reflex, in addition to the Blackteks, and I wasn’t running as many defense reactions.

AoW felt pretty bad in this deck to me. It doesn’t block. You aren’t going wide enough to make the +1 buff that good. The draw two clause might be OK except I don’t usually have too many cards in hand, so there is a risk of banishing my one attack action and drawing up 2 non attacks that I can’t use. I was often using the go again and draw cards modes, which is a card neutral way to give go again when using Tunic, but is card negative otherwise. I think there are better ways to give go again. Consider EBTT. Off a spiders bite, it can replace itself and give the next attack action card go again for 0 pitch… better than what we would get from AoW choosing go again and draw 2 I think.

I am not running Cash In, a card that on the face of it seems obvious to include. Trading two silvers for two cards, netting one card, seems like it’d be good. However, I feel like I really want to be using silvers for my equipment, and there are a lot of hands where you can’t efficiently use an extra card anyway. So in the end I don’t think Cash In is that good in this deck.

My more aggressive build was running E-Strike. It felt OK, but wasn’t doing a lot for me and I needed room for more synergistic cards so I took it out.

Conclusions

I’m really enjoying the Assassin class so far, and the process of exploring a brand new hero (in a brand new meta, no less). Arakni seems competent, but I’m doubtful it’s going to be a top tier hero at this point. Matchups into most heros have felt OK, but this list at least really struggles into Guardian and Dromai at least. I will try to think about how to tilt those a bit into my favor because right now the matches seem close to unwinnable.

I’m sure we’ll get more support for Assassin in an upcoming release, then maybe Arakni will break out like Iyslander did when we went from Everfest to Uprising. And who knows, maybe someone will crack a build that is just nuts. I doubt it, but would love to see it.

I’ll update in a future post as I learn more and play into different matchups a few more times.