Table of Contents
Skirmish Season 14 has started in game stores all over the world. We are seeing the new Silver Age format being the choice for players to compete for unique promos and playmats to go alongside Hala, Bladesaint of the Vow.
The Silver Age format has been varied and eclectic for many months, and now we're seeing how competitive play converges at the store level.
Skirmish Season 14 Week 1
The overwhelming showing for Silver Age's first major in store series is exciting, but the results are staggering.
Ira, Crimson Haze
The original Ninja has always been incredibly powerful in 20 life formats. The consistent increase in value as well as the aggressive Ninja card pool adds up to what could pressurise any Silver Age metagame.
Recent results of higher level events, such as the Showdown in Rotterdam, have all seen more and more Ira, Crimson Haze decks converting better and better.
Briar
This deck fluctuates so quickly between best in show, to banned out, to best in show again. After Chris Iaali's showing at the Calling in Shanghai, Briar has returned to the forefront of the metagame, off the back of Harness Lightning. The one sudden hit of tall Arcane damage is far more than most defend against in this format.
This style of aggression will always be how Briar plays. The deck is pretty adept at attacking on numerous different angles. The nature of the meta will determine if the deck wants to stay on this gameplan or pivot into more or less Arcane.
Iyslander
What's surprising is the increase of Iyslander in the overall winrate. A deck that deals almost exclusively in Arcane damage, big attacks like Fyendal's Fighting Spirit and Wounded Bull, and disruption in Frostbite Tokens is fairly well suited to tripping up the aggro decks and pressuring the Guardians with Arcane damage.
We may be on the look out for Iyslander to take a place as the defacto disruptive deck in the format.
Other Decks
Numerous other decks performed well during Skirmish Season 14 Week 1.
Kayo has been widely regarded as the best deck up until Shanghai. It would perform very well in the current metagame, as it provides tall but fast aggression.
The best performing Guardian deck is Oldhim. With the overall aggressive stance of the metagame right now, something as uber defensive as Oldhim would be well positioned to fatigue almost anything. Oldhim is the best user of the Mastery Pack Guardian Block cards, such as Clash of Arms.
It's noteworthy that the other good user of then newly unbanned Rootbound Carapace is Florian. The defensive Runeblade that wants to stack up an absurd number of Runechants is only going to get stronger in this metagame as it learns to adapt to whichever threat is most present in the meta.
Wrap Up
As Skirmish Season 14 goes on, we can expect to see decks innovate in this relatively new, diverse format. As we go towards the release of Omens, and the first lot of voting coming, it's likely the best performers across all of Skirmish Season are the one's likely to be voted as "benched" by the community.
Keep your eyes to fabtcg.gg for the latest in Flesh and Blood news.
