Hardly A Loest Cause

[Secruoser]

As promised, I'm sharing a Loest deck which won me 10 games in 15 so far. It’s quite different from the Loestladwen’s standard deck, and more ally-oriented. I like the control given by Loest’s ability, and came up with utility allies to support his long cooldown and compliment his ability.

Deck name:
Hardly A Loest Cause

(23 Allies)
3 x Fatebreak Familiar
3 x Layarian Diplomat
3 x Jasmine Rosecult
1 x Aldon the Brave
3 x Priest of the Light
2 x Mystic of the Vale
3 x Artful Squire
1 x Layarian Seductress
1 x Paladin of Unaxio
1 x Raven Wildheart
1 x Eriss Fateweaver
1 x Aeon Stormcaller
1 x Gunther, General of Balor

(12 Abilities)
3 x Retreat!
2 x Road Less Traveled
1 x Live Together, Die Alone
3 x Portal
3 x Supernova

(3 Items)
3 x Tome of Knowledge

It might look inconsistent due to the variety, but I'd like to think of this as a utility deck with answer for almost everything, especially when you factor in Loest's ability.

Deck breakdown:
FF replacing Puwen for its ability to negate annoying 2cc abilities like Death from Above, Embers of the Just, Crippling Blow, Blood Moon, Forgiveness and many more, and FF is just gonna get better when upgraded to negate up to 3cc abilities in the next version. Enemies are more than happy to trade their abilities to kill FF but it’s fair enough for me as ability cards are one of the hardest to counter, especially the ones that don’t stay on board. By playing FF I can counter those before they even come into play, and I get a 2 atk ally.

LD is one of my favourites to negate passives like Stealth, Defender, reduced damage, etc… His ability is not always useful, but can be game breaking when it matters. My favourite combo is to LD a Steadfast enemy and have Loest takes care of it.

PotL is always the annoying ally to deny your enemy one turn of SE with a heal bonus. It helps to offset a bit of the long cool down of Loest’s ability by slowing down your enemy’s SE.

MotV and AS are included to take care of key attachments and items against Wulvens, Warriors, Elementals and Hunters. So far work great for me.

Layarian Seductress is a bit of an odd ball here and she always end up being sacced. Might replace her though.

PoU for more utility (poison/fire removal, dampens ice/fire damage). Supernova becomes more unfair to your enemy when PoU is played on your side.

The rest of the biggies help to make the mid-late game more playable.

Retreat! and RLT work great with summoned abilities of LD, PotL, MotV and AS. You can use more than one time of their summoned abilities with this combo. A bit on the exclusive side, Retreat! is also great against buffed enemy ally and GB’s 7cc fatty at T4. RLT works more in your favour by re-summoning disabled/hurt allies and annoy your enemy by drawing 2 cards in doing that. You can also save your ally from Supernova if able to.

Bad match ups include weenie decks and direct damage, of which I introduced LTDA and Supernova into this deck to take care of that.

You can play Portal just once, around T5-7 and it makes a lot of difference in your game so I usually sac the extra.

As for Loest’s ability, I only use it when absolutely necessary. You feel so much control in your hand when you know you can exile any super-powerful-key-card that your enemy plays (unless he plays it twice! of which he will need twice the luck to draw that hand within 5 turns).

The thing with this deck is that it is not utterly dependent on any one card, but mainly outplaying your enemy’s tricks until they lose steam. It is normal to drop to single digit health and win with this deck, hence the name Hardly A Loest Cause.

Inputs appreciated, improvements welcomed! Thanks.