Overview
I’ve played this game a lot, mostly as Volco and through a lot of testing I’ve arrived at what I think is the most consistent powerful Volco deck. It shockingly isn’t a the rock deck, it’s just a curve out deck, with a few very powerful synergies. I’ll go over mulligans and boon selection
Explanation of cards
High roller swagger: mostly here for deck thinning, but the healing can be helpful in a pinch.
Nano-med: Easily the best healing card in the game. synergizes with dragoste.
Unfair advantage: Might be the best card in the game. The only horrible draw is mana boost, even drawing a one cost card isn’t that bad cuz then you’ve effectively played a 1 mana draw one which still thins your deck. It’s good at any stage of game, you never don’t want to draw this. Good card is good.
Excitable: we play a lot of cards that cost three or more, attack speed on Volco is really strong because it lets you knock enemies over easier. Plus more dps is good.
Flash of Anger: 30% damage for two mana is a lot. It’s triggered when something hit’s your shield, which you have frequently or when you get hit by masochist blade. Also when you have magma burst you’ll get the damage boost before all the enemies around you get damaged.
Surge Flow: this card lets us play more cards and higher cost cards sooner. If you get the boon mana boost which you will because it’s common, you can play this card on turn 1 and play a three drop on turn two which is an incredible turn. Cheating mana good.
Dragoste: heales you and works with nano meds, draws you a card, gets an excitable boost and reduces the cost of wrecking ball. That’s a lot for three mana.
Weapon upgrade: See above but gives you more damage.
Forest fire: Besides just being a great card when combined with magma burst it can give you infinite shields.
Shock Helmet: I know it looks terrible, I know but it’s actually alright on it’s own in a game where you tend to die from getting swarmed. It’s also triggered when something hits your shield, magma or otherwise. It’s not on it’s own, it’s got masochist blade. Masochist blade triggers all reactions. This is crazy strong.
Shield generator: So besides the fact that this makes it so that when your shield gets hit sometimes you get another shield, it’s also triggered by masochist blade, which means that every time masochist blade hits you it’s effectively healed you from your last hit.
Masochist blade: So first off it gives you 60% damage for 4 mana. You pay 7 for 45% in this game. It’s generally good with volco because his main attack does only one hit. But we’ve also got synergies, everytime it hits you you have a chance to gain a shield and get a shock nova around you, which is just busted. Though word to the wise, do not flamenado after playing this card, you will die.
Magma burst: It’s damage gets boosted by masochist blade weapon upgrade and most importantly wrecking ball. The shield starts to cool down before it goes away which means that while you have forest fire up it every kill you get reduces the shields cooldown. When the burst happens you kill a lot of stuff, so you get your shield back. Rinse repeat.
Wrecking ball: So first things first stacking 70 percent damage bonus is really good, especially when you’re doing area damage so you can keep it going while focusing on a boss. Volco only really knows how to overkill stuff so turning it on is trivial. This card nukes bosses. We run a lot of three cost cards because they reduce this cards cost while giving us excitable. Important note is that if you draw this card off a dragoste or weapon upgrade it does get it’s mana reduced. Usually cost 0-3 by the end of the game but honestly it works so well in this deck you’re willing to pay full cost for it.
Key synergies to keep in mind.
Magma burst + forest fire + excitable
Masochist blade + excitable + shield generator + shock helmet
Mulligan and boon selection
Mulligan: You want to hard mulligan for excitable, surge flow and wrecking ball because these cards snowball if you have them early. If you already have surge flow you can keep a card it ramps to the turn after you play it ( a 4 drop if you don’t have mana boost and a 3 drop if you do). With no mana factor boon you can also keep a 3 drop if you have excitable already, if you have excitable and you do have mana boost, you want another two drop. Without factory you can also keep nano med
Boons: You want one mana factory and then some combination of card draw boons, usually two extra draw or one of those plus thrifty will work. The mana factory boon is quite good because it allows us to go two drop into two drop and we run 8 two drops so that gets to happen a lot. Surge flow into three drop into four drop by turn three is also insane:
After that your boon priority is: spell discount, Heal up, bloody finale and who’s next because they are all insane boons that tend to be good for everyone.
besides that you want more max health and life insurance is actually a crazy good healing boon.
Things to look out for
Potentially difficult battle rules:
Curse of excess can be hard if you’ve acquired too many card draw boons, usually you want to mulligan for mana boost and surge flow and it will be exceptionally easy
Side effect spells: Well this one makes mana boost a whole lot worse doesn’t it. Mulligan hard for upgrades and you’ll be a little weaker but fine. Just never play spells.
unstable mana: prioritize card draw in the mulligan and don’t keep surge flow
Difficult bosses:
Ruby. The thing about Ruby is she doesn’t let you hit her and your exploding shields increase the range which your shield hits her drones in random directions. If you can it helps not to play magma burst, that solves the problem completely actually.
That’s it. The deck might take a couple tries to completely figure out because their are a lot of moving parts and often a lot of important decisions but I think that makes the game more fun. Don’t press E after you play masochist blade and you’ll probably be fine. I know there’s not really an active community for this game, but I really like it. So if you like this guide let me know and I might make more. Enjoy!