The Silver Age of Gravy Bones
AHOY! many of you have set sea in Classic Constructed with Gravy Bones already and with the restrictions of Golden Tipple and Chart the High Seas in that format, theres been a slight downtick of efficiency, but still a great representation in the meta. However, in Silver Age, We get access to the full Tipple engine again and this article is going to go over a pretty greedy and aggressive list, along with some basic logic for Gravy Bones and new players to consider. Lets begin.
Equipment Suite
With the release of Compendium of Rathe, we have some cool new tools for Silver Age. Primarily Equipment, but a few action cards too that I’ve only begun to experiment with, but the Equipment fits perfectly.
First off we have Myrkhellir Helm and this card from at least an Art perspective doesnt fit Gravy Bones, but playability is through the roof. This card has facilitated some WIDE! and Aggressive Turns for me, im talking maybe 4 or 5 attacks wide with swiftwater sloops, battalion barque and some limpits to go at someone for 20+ damage in a turn. Not only does this give us Aggressive Greedy lines to chase, it also has temper to give us a nice free block early when we have a gold in play. The opportunity to run this line happens quite often too, I would say if we ever have the Saltwater Swell with a Swiftwater Sloop in Arsenal or in hand and we compass a Blue on top, your good to potentially go for it. If we pitch a blue and Swell the blue on top we have 5 left in pitch, meaning we pop the helm, pop a gold with 1 pitch remaining and we are more than likely going to be hitting more blues to get going wide AND have Sloops and Barques now active too. Another thing to mention here that the Helm will NOT trigger if we use Gravy Bones ability to destroy the gold and draw. The Helm only works when we pay to pop the gold ourselves, which isnt the end of the world.
The next new tool we have is Scuttle Toes, now this card art definitely fits Gravy Bones. This is another card that helps us get very Aggressive. I’ve used this for both Riggermortis and Swabbie when the chance arrived. If you get to pop an Avast Ye! or a Flying High then this play line opens up for us to get us a potential 12 to 14 damage additional push on our allies. Typically we want to use this if we are going for a kill because we are going to have to sacrifice the ally and End of Turn, but this allows us to get quite a bit more damage into a turn pretty effectively. It wouldnt be worth it to use this on a Limpit attack or even an Oysten or Cutty, but those two heavy hitters when given the opportunity, it most definitely is. This card initially was in the board as an AB tool, but it deserves to be maindecked and with that, it opens up our Sideboard one extra card too.
And the final New piece of equipment we get is the Trench of Watery Depths. This is also a pretty cool card as it achieves two things for us….ok 3 things. It blocks for 1, cool. When it defends you pitch a blue from graveyard and this right here is achieving two things. One, its getting us pitch on our opponents turn, this is really only useful for us when we have to pay for AB, typically runechants when they decide to go wide and 2 it helps slightly against fatigue. I’m still not certain if this needs to be a sideboard card, but for now its main deck.
Now we have a classic Piece of Gear for us in our Arms slot, Wahsed up Wave. Ever have too many Allies in your hand, Here ya go, throw them in the trash for profit and get them back later, wanna fill up the graveyard from Top of Deck after Compass, ta-da! Great easy card to use.
Finally, we have our most important piece of Equipment, our Off-Hand Compass of Sunken Depths. This allows us to be good and playable and as a Jarl main, this thing has to get the metaphorical Hammer always. Anyways, my apologies, I was reminescing… Tap look at top card of deck and then first card with watery grave you play from Graveyard each turn has go again. When to Tap? I would say its equal parts when needing to calculate blocks and equal parts when you need to confirm a Saltwater Swell pitch extension. Being able to confirm a blue on top for Swell to extend hands is very important and if this gets your Sloops or Barques online thats great to know ahead of time to understand what your cracking back with, OR if theres a blue on top to be able to get a couple allies out of graveyard, etc. Personally I like tapping to look before blocks.
Main Deck
Now we have the MEAT and potatoes of the deck, lets begin by talking about our engines, thats right, we got two. This little bad boy is a Two Stroke 8 Cylinder all Boat no Brakes bomber! First Up, Golden Tipple.
Golden Tipple is going to be the most efficient way to filter allies into Graveyard, getting gold and on top of that we get to draw afterwards too. Even better is when we let the blue tipple resolve and hit GY we can immediately cast the Ally we sent there. Next is Saltwater Swell
Saltwater Swell is the card that allows us to Extend our turns and get some crazy stuff going. Earlier in the article I said I like to compass before im blocking, thats because if I have a swell in hand and a blue on top of deck, I want to take advantage of that. Taking advantage of that also means I have Allies in Graveyard, or Sloops / Barrque in hand too. When I can pitch a blue to play Saltwater Swell hitting a blue to have 5 pitch remaining, the world is my oyster and we can literally do anything we want forever and with this list, it happens OFTEN! Now lets bring up the cards we use to bring in some of our heavy damage and extensions, beginning with Swiftwater Sloop.
Swiftwater Sloop is going to be one of our cards that let us go wide, typically we will use this after a Saltwater Swell hits a blue. Next is the Big Boi Boat Battalion Barque.
I recently ran into some decks and players that are great at playing against Gravy and are good at blocking and clearing board states with a weapon hit, or have access to go again on their side of the board. Battalion Barque is here to help compensate and push damage through. Theres been games when if the opponent managed the board state effectively we were running out of gas, this applies pressure and can help us clear out opponents hands and potentially keep allies on board longer, while also being a finisher. Next, lets talk about our Ally suite.
Cutty Shark: 1 Cost, 3 Attack, 4 Butt Shark Man! Typically he has not been very impotant, but in Sage he has a home. Being a 4 butt is kind of impotant in this format and will require some of the stronger cards in decks to deal with him, or multiple go agains. Also he can pump his own attack should you have an inefficient turn with pitch that needs to be used, OR if you need to get 2 blues in pitch, dont forget to use his ability to maybe tick down to one and pitch another blue to swing a barque or sloop if needed. Now lets get to Limpit
Limpit is our Go Again Ally attack and honestly one of my favorites. Not only is the art one of the best for the allies, she swings for 2 which seems negligible and sometimes people just wont block it because theyve only got 3 blocks in hand, with 0 to cast from Graveyard and only 1 to swing, its just an efficient card. Next is our one-Of Oysten.
Oysten is a pretty good ally. He costs 0 which is awesome, he swings for 3 which is cool and when he dies he makes you gold. I prefer him as only a one-of here just because he already have 4 other 1 butt heroes and id rather not have too many…5 in total seems like too much, but it is what it is! Next is a Glass Cannon Riggermortis.
Riggermortis is cheap to cast, to swing with and is something that absolutely demands attention. While easy to handle and deal with being a 1 butt, he cannot be ignored by the opponent. Last but not least is Swabbie.
Swabbie is our Big Boi, he costs the most and swings for the most, even if only 1 more than riggermortis, but swinging for 7 allows us to take advantage of breakpoints with our loot the arsenal and loot the hold buffs efficiently. Other than that hes just a big boi capable of big boi thangs. Up next are all the cards that are going to be activating the Gravy Bones Hero power, the blue things and first up is Avast Ye! and Flying High
Avast Ye! and Flying High I think are our best Blue cards personally. We can take full advantage of these when our Graveyard has targets (other than Limpit) and we have the ability to cast them and swing with them. We do this by playing Avast Ye! or Flying High, allowing it to resolve then hit our Graveyard, thus activating Gravy Bones. Then we will cast the ally we want and swing with them because that first attack will have go again now. From the beginning of that play line we can either play another ally somewhere from either hand or Graveyard to build a board state, or sloop to go wider and or end with a big Barque. Up next is our current one-of here in blue with Loot the Arsenal.
Loot the Arsenal is definitely a good card for disruption, but it feels like in Sage that its hard to actually pull off with our allies and thats why I cut this down to 1. Its still here because should the opportunity arise to get full value out of it, you should of course take it, but most importantly its a 0 cost blue go again thats a 3 block. Next up is a card that follows the same line of logic, Loot the Hold
Loot the Hold has the same stats and purpose of Loot the Arsenal, but I feel like attacking the hand is more applicable and will always present an opportunity unlike Loot the Arsenal, thats all. Next is a really cool card Murderous Rabble.
Murderous Rabble is best used when we know we have a Blue on top of Deck after a Compass, but also it gets us into our Graveyard to pull out some minons while delivering a little damage too possibly, regardless of whats ontop of deck, just swing, let it resolve and hit graveyard, then go to town with your allies. Next is Portside Exchange
Portside Exchange is going to fill up our Graveyard with allies, draw and give us a gold. It’s another very efficient card like Golden Tipple, while no offense, it gets the job done just as well! Up last is Sea Floor Salvage.
I usually only use this card to block or pitch with, very rarely do I actually use this card, but the possibility is always there if we want to blow up a yellow Swell or Tipple in the graveyard in order to get access to our allies.
Sideboard
For this sideboard we are Boarding in Arcane Polarity in for Wizards and Runeblades
The Nullrune package is only coming in for wizards to have AB3 since we Maindeck AB1
Oasis Respite can come in for Warriors, Ninjas and Guardians usually
Unmovable comes in for Guardians trying to go tall, along with Kayo
Rally the coast Guard comes in for Kayo and ninjas currently.
My card ive been targetting to pull out has been Sea Floor Salvage. This section will get more in depth the more times I sideboard but the above are lines of logic to follow..
Final Thoughts
I’ve tried a defensive list for Gravy and it just wasnt working well, however this particular aggro list is working very well and its incredibly fun. It will take some time to learn your lines, when to be greedy and best way to manipulate certain mechanics, but it is a very rewarding experience right now. It has tough matchups into things like ninjas or go again heroes usually, but its not impossible. Gravy Bones Aggro in Silver Age is worth your time and consideration.