An In Depth Look at Skyweaver Prisms 1/5: Strength

Want to know which Prism is right for you?

Congratulations to urban for winning a free silver card from the last post.

In this series of articles I’ll talk about the 5 Skyweaver Prisms: Strength, Agility, Wisdom, Heart, and Intellect. It’s aimed for newer players but everyone can benefit. There’s a lot of nuances to the prisms when min-maxing at conquest. Let’s dive right in with Strength.

First off there’s an excellent series of articles from the devs explaining each prism. The intellect article contains links to the others: https://www.skyweaver.net/news/design-intellect

STRENGTH

Spirit Animal: Bear

Appeal: Powerful units that dominate the board. Simple gameplay. Mono Strength is the best prism for beginners.

Elements: 1) Strong units 2) Strong removal 3) Buff-based nature

Strengths: STR units are generally overstatted and very robust. You can see examples of this in its strongest winrate cards. Psyche is a 3/5 tank for 2. Rubble Devil is a 4/5 tank for 3.

These strong stats across the curve create enormous pressure for your opponent. In my experience playing AGI, it’s fair to say that once you lose the board against STR, or are forced into reactive removal plays, you’ve almost always lost the game.

You can expect STR to create a consistent stream of pressure. It has a very consistent gameplan. Play units. Smash units. Every turn is a near predictable play that dumps stats on the board or removes them.

Weaknesses: While STR has some of the best hard removal in any prism (perhaps second to only INT), it’s difficult to recover the board once lost. The main reason for this is the mana cost of removal is pretty steep. So when you’re playing a 2-6 mana removal card, you can only follow up with a weaker 1 or 2 drop.

In addition, the third emphasis of STR design are the buffs. The focus on buffs is also a weakness. Cards like Wind Sword/Aqua Sword/Blaze of Glory/Lead Goblet are quite weak and require you to have a good board. Due to requiring a unit, buffs need to be very powerful (such as Weighted Die) to have a strong winrate.

Summary: STR is a very straightforward prism. Most of my games against it follow the same route. You should play STR (or add it as a dual prism) when you want strong units and strong removal. Unfortunately STR has a boom or bust card pool (some are very strong, some are very weak) with little draw power to balance bad hands.

---

Let’s get more in depth here.

Strength Matchup Table

This is the only known list of conquest discovery winrates (posted 2 months ago). The stats are still relevant (it’s largely the same card pool and strategies).

• STR has one of the largest splits between 1st and 2nd. This is due to how strong its stats hold up along the curve. When STR has the mana advantage it’s dropping even more pressure.

• STR has balanced matchups across the board. It’s mostly just slightly losing against everything. It can win any game when high rolling but isn’t the best strategy overall.

• You should mostly just graduate past STR after a certain point. Or play around it if your favorite prism needs the boost to unit strength and removals.

Strength Highest Winrate Cards (Data Courtesy of SkyweaverStats)

1. Psyche (2 Mana 3/5 Guard/Lifesteal)- 54%

2. Engine Blade (1 Mana 2/2, Grows)- 53%

3. Rubble Devil (3 Mana 4/5 Guard)- 52.9%

4. Howl Geist (3 Mana 4/4)- 52.2%

5. Flashbang (1 Mana 1/3 Guard with Shield)- 52.1%

I’m taking the top 5 cards by winrate and the bottom 5 to better explain the prism. With STR you can see it’s pretty straightforward. The top cards are basically the highest statted cards. They’re also all early drops. In fact the top 20 or so of STR cards are all 1-4 cost with a few incredible 5 drops. This distribution tells us that STR wins games by sticking to the board early and holding it.

Strength Bottom Winrate Cards

1. Aqua Sword (Stat Buff)- 45%

2. Wind Sword (Stat Buff/Shroud)- 45.8%

3. Glorious Mane (Buff)- 45.9%

4. Burninate (Mass Removal)- 46.1%

5. Stone Fist (Buff)- 46.1%

The bottom cards for STR are all either buffs or removal. A lot of weaker players hold on to mass removal thinking they can swing the board. But the opponent just ends up refilling so turns where you’re playing mass removal are often weak.

STR on the whole is really held back by its weaker cards. As a result, when it draws well it can be quite powerful.

Final Tips and Concluding Thoughts

After looking at the data, the game plan both for and against STR is pretty simple.

As the STR Player, you want to maximize tempo above everything else with your first mulligan. The value/stats along the curve will sort itself out. So make sure your first 4 cards are the best 4 playable.

Against the STR Player, you want to prevent them from holding the board. Clear their board every turn and prevent them for establishing a foothold.

This is fun because it’s a very simple tug of war that will decide the game. If STR holds the board, it will win. If it doesn’t, it will lose. STR has strong removal but it’s not priced efficiently. So it can’t take the board back.

Happy to answer any questions/look at mulligans in the comments.